I LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. J 



THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 



THE 



Secret of Christianity. 



by 
S. S. HEBBERD. 






BOSTON: 

LEE AND SHEPARD, PUBLISHERS. 

NEW YORK: 
LEE, SHEPARD, AND DILLINGHAM. 

1874. 



^ 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by 

S. S. HEBBEED, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



CAMBRIDGE! 
PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON. 



PREFACE. 



THIS little book, it is. easy to see, is one of very 
grand pretensions. It promises to show the 
essential difference between Christianity and all other 
religions, — to describe the causes of that modem 
progress which has raised our life so far above that 
of antiquity. In a word, it claims to unfold the true 
philosophy of history. 

These may seem narrow limits in which to deal 
with such vast questions. Bnt the author beli< 
that there is here to be found every thing necessary 
for the understanding and testing of his theory; and 
beyond that he does not care to go. He has net 
attempted to write the history of civilization, lie 
lias desired only to present and to verify, in the 
simplest manner possible, the great law which 
through all ages has governed the life of Chris- 
tendom. If he has accomplished his design, the book 
is large enough. If he has failed, it could well be 
smaller. 

March, 1874. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 
THE CIVILIZATION OF INDIA. 

PAGE 

The Law of Paganism 9 

Brahminism 10 

The Buddhistic Revolt 25 

Triumph op Brahminism 38 



CHAPTER H. 
HELLENIC CIVILIZATION. 

The Hellenic System 48 

The Greek Protest 61 

Pythagoras 63 

Plato 05 

Aristotle 72 

Neo-Platonism 79 

Comparison of Greek and Indian Civilization .... 82 

CHAPTER ni. 

THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Faith in Christ 88 

The Hellenic Factor 90 

The Oriental Factor 91 

Doctrines of Christianity % 93 

Law of Christian Development 90 



Vlll TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE CATHOLIC AGE. 

PAGE 

Germanic Life yy 

The Catholic System 104 

Feudalism 114 

The Love of Country 125 

Condition of Woman in the Middle Ages 127 

CHAPTER V. 

THE CATHOLIC AGE. (Continued.) 

Medieval Art 131 

The Origin of Love of Nature 132 

Catholic Philosophy 143 

CHAPTER VI. 

THE PROTESTANT AGE. 

Final Results of Catholicism 152 

The Protestant System 154 

Modern Society. Doctrine of Equality 156 

Rise of the Industrial Movement 159 

Revival of Historic Sense . 171 

CHAPTER Vn. 

THE PROTESTANT AGE. (Continued.) 

The Origin of Science 173 

The Failure of Greek Science 174 

The School of Alexandria 182 

The Influence of Middle Ages 187 

Analysis of the Inductive Process 191 

History of Modern Science 194 

CHAPTER VLH. 

Conclusion 209 



THE SECRET OF CHRISTIAOTTY. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE CIVILIZATION OF INDIA. 

r I ^HERE are two moral tendencies by the one or 
the other of which all ancient civilization was 
controlled. The one tendency turns the spirit to the 
outer world, to seek for objects of reverence, of sup- 
port, and guidance: the other turns the spirit inward 
upon itself, teaching it to rely upon its own impulses 
and powers. Under the influence of the one, man 
becomes submissive and reverent : he is weighed down 
by a, deep sense of his own un worthiness ; he puts 
his trust only in an external and divine authority; he 
yields readily to every bond that may be placed upon 
him. Under the influence of the other, man grows 
proudly conscious of human dignity: he trusts in his 
own intellectual energies rather than in things di- 
vinely revealed ; he is animated by the spirit of enter- 
prise and of freedom. In a word, two generic types 



10 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

of character are formed, which stand at the very op- 
posite poles of human development. 

There are two nations — India and Greece — which 
have carried out this process of development so per- 
fectly that they may well be considered the repre- 
sentative nations of antiquity. To them we shall 
confine our attention in the present and the following 
chapter. It is our object to show that the one-sided, 
unchecked, and unrestrainable development of one of 
these moral impulses, to the exclusion of the other, 
was at once the law and the fatal curse of ancient 
civilization. First of all, we shall examine the sys- 
tem of India. 

The Hindoo system follows the first of the two 
impulses that we have described. It constantly 
tends to degrade human personality, and to glorify 
the external universe. Its religion is the worship of 
nature. But just as soon as a people begin to emerge 
from barbarism, they must begin to lose the reverence 
for merely sensible objects: they seek to sublimate 
their first rude conceptions. Even in the earliest 
Yedic hymns, the poet, while adoring the fire, is 
careful to say that it is something different from the 
visible earthly fire that he worships. 1 In that we see 
the constant tendency of Hindoo thought. The 
Greek, starting from the same primitive conceptions, 

* Wilson, Rig -Veda Sanhita, v. 302. 



THE CIVILIZATION OF INDIA. 11 

gradually pushes the elements of nature worship 
into the background, and humanizes his theology. 
He invests his divinities with a living personality ; 
he pictures them in the most beautiful forms of art ; 
he bestows upon them the noblest endowments of 
human nature. But Hindoo theology, even in its 
highest development, still clings to the worship of 
nature and the impersonal : the only change is that 
its conceptions grow more subtile. It passes beyond 
the merely phenomenal into the region of the ideal 
and the absolute. Its divinities, so far from putting 
on the human form, put off all form and every attri- 
bute of personality. Nature is still worshipped, but 
under conceptions the most severely abstract, the 
most idealistic which the human intellect can grasp. 

We see, then, what gradually came to be the 
supreme object of worship in Hindoo theology. It is 
Absolute Existence, the mysterious and unapproach- 
able substrate of all natural phenomena. The source 
of all things, it yet possesses no attribute either phys- 
ical or moral. The source of all activity, it is itself 
inactive". Even intellect and consciousness form no 
part of its nature, are only emanations from its pure 
passivity. It is the unknown Entity which dwells in 
every form of being — " has complete existence in all 
things whether extremely high or extremely low." 2 

Thus upon its theological side the Hindoo impulse 
1 Menu, Institutes, vi. (>5. 



12 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

develops into pantheism ; upon its philosophical side 
it becomes a system of idealism. At first Indian 
thought had been dazzled by the beauty and splendor 
which lie upon the surface of things. But soon men 
began to see that all this is fleeting and perishable ; 
scenes of apparent disorder, of gloom, of decay and 
disease, crowded rapidly upon the attention. The 
world of sense became for them a gloomy chaos where 
law and accident, beauty and deformity, life and 
death, are constantly contending for the mastery. 
And now, in order to preserve their primitive rever- 
ence for nature, there was no refuge for them but in 
a system of idealism. The decaying chaotic world of 
sense came to be regarded as a mere illusion. It was 
the dim, imperfect shadow of an ideal universe which 
was alone real, was subject to no changes of birth and 
decay, had nothing gross or disorderly'in its nature. 
Those universal ideas, which seem to the materialist 
to be only creations of the human intellect, came to 
be regarded by the Hindoo thinker as the sole realities, 
— as the component parts of that spiritual universe 
of which the sensible world was only a faint and 
feeble copy. This idealistic tendency was universal : 
it seemed impossible to make any real departure from 
it, even amid the wildest vagaries of speculation. Of 
all the different schools of Indian philosophy, no one 
is essentially materialistic : 3 all teach the doctrines of 

3 Haughton, As. Trans., iii. 412. 



THE CIVILIZATION OF INDIA. 13 

idealism with an emphasis which diminishes only as 
they depart from the standards of orthodoxy. The 
Yedanta school — the most orthodox of all — con- 
stantly teaches that nothing in the world of sense is 
really existent : God being like one asleep, all has 
been made by Maya or illusion. 4 True salvation — 
final deliverance from error and evil — is attained 
only when the sonl has begun to understand that all 
visible things are nothing more than fleeting shadows 
of unseen realities. 5 With this the doctrines of the 
Nyaya and the Vaiseshica schools essentially coincide. 6 
Even the Sankhya philosophy, that great fountain- 
head of Hindoo heresy, is as decidedly idealistic as its 
more orthodox rivals. 7 

4 Vans Kennedy, On Vedantism, As. Trans. 

5 Siva Pirakasam, Journal Am. Oriental Soc., [v. 196. 

6 The logical school of the Nyaya is as decidedly realistic as 
any branch of Mediaeval scholasticism. " Community/* it teaches, 
" the Common nature, the universal, is one, is eternal." ( Dallantyne, 
Nyaya Philosophy, 89.) In fact, all Braminical Bchools were realistic 
The Buddhists are alone cited as denying the category of universals, 
and as asserting that particulars only have real existence. (Cole- 
brooke, Misc. Essays, i. 287.) But even that is doubtful. 

1 In the Sankhya Karika, xxxviii., it is taught that all material 
elements are only gross emanations from more subtle rudiments imper- 
ceptible to the Besses; and, according to the commentary, the spe- 
cies are enfolded within these. Furthermore, these subtle rudiments 
are evolved from consciou.-ue>s or Bgotiem [Ibid. XXV.), and this 
from intellect, which is the first great principle or emanation of 
nature. (Ibid, xxii. Consult also Barth. St. llilaire. M€moires <l> 
V Academic des Sciences M<>r. d Pol., xx. 816, /> Sankhya.) Nor does 
the idealism of Kapila pause here. In his doctrine of the three qual- 
ities, which has gained so wide an influence over Indian thought, 



14 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Idealism, then, is the faith of Hindoo philosophy in 
all its schools. Nor was this belief confined to the 
philosophers alone : it was a universal sentiment which 
pervaded all hearts, and moulded the life of the 
Indian people during every stage of their develop- 
ment. It constitutes the inbreathing spirit of the 
national poetry ; the Vedic scriptures affirm it ; 8 and 
even the law of the land proclaims that the material 
universe is formed from immaterial ideas, that nature 
exists only in the spirit of God. 9 

We have seen, then, in what way the Hindoo system 
looks upon God and the Universe. Turn now to its 
conception of human nature, and we shall find it 
controlled by precisely the same impulse. It exhibits 
no trace of the spirit of individualism, no disposition 
to dwell upon those high prerogatives which so 
sharply distinguish the life of man from all lower 
forms of existence. Its reverence for the outer world 
tends constantly towards a degradation of the moral 



Nature is described as a state of equilibrium between three spiritual 
forces, — goodness, foulness or passion, darkness or ignorance. (Ibid. 
xii.) Thus, all existence, whether physical, moral, or intellectual, is 
explained as resulting from the combination of consciousness witb 
these still more abstract energies. After this, we can readily com- 
prehend that the wild mysticism of the Puranas and of the Bhagavat- 
Gita could easily find its basis in the doctrines of Kapila. (Burnouf, 
Bhagavat Pourana, i. 130; Thomson, Bhagavat-Gita, lntrod'n, 80.) 

8 Eckstein, Die Grundlagen der Ind. Philos. in Weber's Indische 
Studien, ii. 385. 

9 Menu, Institutes, xii. 118. 



THE CIVILIZATION OF INDIA. 15 

sense and of human personality. Man is regarded 
only as a constituent part of the surrounding uni- 
verse. Reason, conscience, volition, are nothing more 
than the subtle manifestations of a force which exists 
everywhere in nature. As for human personality, 
that is altogether illusory : the apparent existence of 
the individual soul is one of the many mockeries 
by which man is deceived. 10 

With this conception of human nature, the doctrine 
of fatalism is necessarily linked. Man is regarded as 
an insignificant atom in the all-pervading system, 
bound by the same conditions, and subject to the 
same necessit}' that is imposed upon all created life. 
From the meshes of this brute necessity there is but 
one avenue of escape, and that is through the absorp- 
tion of the individual soul into the universal spirit. 
In other words, the only idea of deliverance that ever 
conies to the Hindoo mind is associated with the end^ 
of all true human life. 

We turn now from these theoretical conceptions, 
which embrace the entire round of existence, to note 
their practical results upon the life of the Indian peo- 
ple. And first of all is presented, as the most salient 
feature of Hindoo character, its profound engross- 

10 The BCeptical philosophy of Kapila proclaims the real existence 
of the individual soul. But even in that there is no affirmation of 
any true human individuality, as we shall see when we come to study 
the cognate doctrine of Buddhism. 



16 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

nient with futurity. Here on earth, as it seemed to 
them, was only the grossness of perishable matter, a 
never-ending round of changes, a mass of corruption, 
amid which man found himself hopelessly entangled. 
Beyond was an ideal universe, eternal, free from all 
changes, endowed with a perfect beauty, order, and 
harmony. In the light of such a contrast, the Hindu 
was naturally led to fix his thought upon the future. 
He was without that profound faith in human nature 
which enabled the Greek to invest the present life 
with so delightful a charm. Lacking that, the Hindoo 
turned to the eternal and the unseen. Never has 
there been a people so disdainful of the present, so 
entirely engrossed with the affairs of futurity. With 
a grand though fatal consistency they have carried 
the objective tendency of the human spirit to its final 
extreme. Revering the external, their reverence has 
not been confined to the sensuous, the material : 
rising above all that, their thought has concentrated 
itself upon what seemed to them the realities of an 
unknown world. Their highest aspirations have been 
for deliverance from the earthy ; their supreme hope, 
the attainment of eternal repose. 11 

And this engrossment with the affairs of futurity, 
so grand in certain of its aspects, has proven the in- 

11 The Greek Megasthenes (Indica ed. SchwanbecJc, 137) noted this 
engrossment with futurity as the most salient feature of Indian philos- 
ophy. 



THE CIVILIZATION OF INDIA. 17 

curable plague of Indian life. It has made human 
life cheap and almost worthless. It has induced 
apathy where there should be enterprise, and fos- 
tered a fatal indifference to all the practical interests 
of life. Above all, it has engendered a superstition 
so universal, so wild and intense, as to be almost in- 
conceivable to our Western thought. It has created 
an eschatology grotesque and monstrous beyond all 
power of description. It has robbed literature of an 
element which to the Greek and the modern seems 
the most valuable of all. Indian history is almost an 
utter blank. We moderns pay but little attention 
to what we call dreams of the future. The Hindoo 
cared still less for what seemed to him only dreams 
of the past. 12 

Closely connected with this engrossment with fu- 
turity is the Hindoo belief in the transmigration of 
souls. It has often been a subject of inquiry, how 
this strange doctrine, never any thing but an exotic 
in the Wist, came to be so universally accepted in 
the East, especially in India. In the light of our 
theory, the explanation becomes an easy one. The 
doctrine of transmigration is founded upon the union 
of two conceptions. The one of these is that con- 

12 "Bei dem Hindu hat die Religion alle Geschichte zerstdrt." 
(Klaproth, Wvrdigung der As. Qesck., quoted in Lassen's Indisehe 
AUerthumskunde, ii. 3.) Lassen also notes other causes, but this is 
the generic one. Concerning the low estimate of history in modem 
India, consult Malcolm, Memoirs of India, ii. 193, and i. 50. 

B 



18 THE SECRET OE CHRISTIANITY. 

temptuous opinion of human individuality which can 
discover no essential difference between the life of 
man and that of the animal, and, therefore, regards 
the transition from one to the other as a most natural 
event. The other is the sense of the wretched en- 
tanglement of man amid the miseries of material 
existence. Even death, which is only a physical 
phenomenon, cannot free us from this entanglement : 
the decay of our present bodies only pushes us into 
some new form of sensible life. Now, both of these 
conceptions, as we have seen, are necessarily evolved 
from that peculiar tendency which rules in India and 
throughout the East. 13 And, wherever these concep- 
tions are fully developed, the belief in transmigra- 
tion must inevitably follow. 

Asceticism is another natural product of the Hindoo 
impulse, closely allied with the two last named. In 
India, the ascetic sentiment has reached its climax. 
It does not, as in the West during the middle ages, 
direct its attention to the body and the bodily pas- 
sions alone. The true goal of the ascetic is consid- 
ered to be the complete destruction of every natural 
faculty, whether physical or moral. Even reason, 
conscience, and volition are to be surrendered, and 
the soul reduced to that state of utter and uncon- 
scious repose which unites it with the Supreme Being. 

13 The veneration of animal life characterizes the Jains in India, 
who are heretics, and atheists perhaps. (Kalpa Sutra, xxi. and 123.) 



THE CIVILIZATION OF INDIA. 19 

In a word, the Hindoo ideal demands the complete 
sacrifice of all individuality as illusory in itself, and 
the source of every other illusion winch afflicts the 
spirit of man. 

We notice, again, that the Hindoo impulse tends 
to weaken the ethical sense. In the ethics of India, 
conscience is almost entirely ignored. The knowl- 
edge of right and wrong is gained from without, — not 
from internal conviction, but from the minute pre- 
scriptions of a supernatural authority. The obliga- 
tion to obey comes also from without. Men are to 
do right for the sake of ulterior considerations. Vir- 
tue is valued only as a means of obtaining final de- 
liverance ; and, even for this purpose, it is not so 
efficacious as speculative knowledge. 14 Last and 
most important of all, virtue is not eternal nor im- 
mutable. It is simply a transient mode of nature, as 
purely phenomenal as color or sound. It cannot be 
predicated of the Universal soul ; and man, when he 
attains final deliverance from the entanglements of 
nature, will be delivered from the bonds of moral 
obligation. 15 

Evidently such conceptions must have *a very dis- 
astrous effect upon the moral life of the people. Let 



14 Koeppen (Die Religion des Buddha, i. 226) asserts that Buddh- 
ism makes virtue the primary and chief means of deliverance. But , 
concerning this, hereafter. 

15 St. Hilaire, Des Vedas, 170 ; Sankhya Karika, lxiii. 



20 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

us adduce a single example. The Greek, in his search 
for knowledge, was impelled by an unselfish love of 
the truth itself : he surrendered himself to his instinc- 
tive craving after the true. But Hindoo philosophy 
seems hardly to have dreamed that the truth was 
desirable for its own sake. Even in the sceptical 
school of the Sankhya, knowledge was valued only 
because it opened the path to final deliverance. 16 
Everywhere truth is regarded as a means, not an 
end. 17 This low conception has led to a still lower 
practice ; and to this day the lack of veracity is a 
universal and incurable vice of Hindoo character. 18 
Intellectual slavery was another necessary product 
of the Oriental impulse. Without that proud faith 
in human nature and its powers which leads men to 
free inquiry, the Hindoo clings servilely to the tradi- 
tions of antiquity. Reason is always subordinate to 
faith. The final criterion of the truth is, that it 
should be divinely revealed: the only test of the 
revelation, that it should have been .handed down 
from the remotest past. It was the work of human 
intellect to develop and to systematize these ancient 
traditions : no one ever dreamed of challenging their 
truth. Even the boldest of all Indian sceptics, Ka- 

16 Colebrooke, Philosophy, Hindus, As. Trans., i. 26. 

17 Menu {Institutes, iv. 123) advises one "to speak no disagreeable 
truth." 

18 Elphinstone, History of India, i. 378 ; Macleod, On India, and 
almost every Indian authority. 



THE CIVILIZATION OF INDIA. 21 

pila, labors painfully to reconcile his chief heresies 
with the teachings of the Hindoo scriptures. 19 Logic, 
philosophy, medicine, and science in general, were all 
founded upon revealed principles whose truth no one 
dared to investigate : the only privilege of the thinkei 
was to draw deductions from the sacred text. Thus 
the entire literature of India has become an endless 
series of commentaries, — subtle, profound, but utterly 
servile. Art, likewise, has been condemned to the 
same servitude : forced to slavishly copy the concep- 
tions of antiquity, it has sadly failed to realize the 
brilliant promises of its youth. 20 In science and phil- 
osophy, endless commentation ; in art, the utter lack 
of freedom and spontaneity. These are the secrets 
of the intellectual decrepitude of India. 

The social institutions of India, before the advent 
of foreign rule, were also developed from that peculiar 
tendency which has been found to control every part 
of Hindoo life. The same spirit which degraded 
human nature and its [towers, tended likewise to 
ignore its rights. According to the ancient law of 

!9 Barthe'lemy St. Hilaire [U Sankkga, Mim. Mot. ct Pol. Acad. 

des Sciences, \x. 317) intimates that Kapila was insincere in his 
efforts at reconciliation. But the intimation — if I may he allowed 
to express the opinion — seems to me to betoken a certain lack of 
appreciation of the fundamental tendencies of the Hindoo spirit. 

20 " si in majoribna -tatnis Bcnlpendia ars et correctio deest, id 
certe non ex gentis indole ant mentis imhecillitate nascitnr, sed quia 
a praescripta forma recedere se non posse dicant." (Paulinus, SSyslema 
Brahm, 251, in Bohlen's Aite Indie*, ii. 196.) 



22 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

India, the king is to be regarded as a divine being. 21 
The subject, on the contrary, has no rights, or hardly 
any: even those which are usually held sacred are 
only very vaguely and imperfectly granted by the 
Brahminical system. Even the right of property in 
the land is nowhere strictly defined ; and it is very 
difficult to decide in whom the ownership of the soil 
is really vested. By some it is supposed to reside in 
the individual holder ; 22 by others to be divided be- 
tween the proprietor and the sovereign: 23 and the 
truth seems to be that the ownership floats vaguely 
and indecisively about between the individual holder, 
the village community, and the king. 24 At all events, 
it was a right of property so vague, so restricted, that 
the sale of lands — the transfer even of the feeble 
possessory title of the holder — was something vir- 
tually unknown in India before the advent of British 
rule. 25 

Of similar origin is the system of castes, that most 
salient feature of the Brahminical polity. Its prin- 
ciple is, that the condition of every man is imposed 
upon him at the very hour of his birth by divine 

21 Menu, Institutes, vii. 4. 

22 The well-known text of Menu {Institutes, ix. 44) seems to sub- 
stantiate this view. In the Mimansa, it is also said that the earth 
belongs not to the sovereign, but to all alike. (Colebrooke, Misc. 
Essays, i. 320. ) 

23 Tod, Feudal System in India, Asiatic. Journal, N. S., v. 42. 

24 Elphinstone, History of India, i. 141, seq. 

25 Campbell, Tenure of Land in India, Cobden Club Essays, 165. 



THE CIVILIZATION OF INDIA. 23 

authority, and that the barriers thus erected must be 
maintained by the most rigorous restrictions of the 
law. In a word, caste is a perfect expression in 
social life of the Indian spirit, — a spirit which frowns 
upon every free impulse of the human soul, and seeks 
to subordinate the individuality of man, even in the 
.minutest details of living, to the dictates of an exter- 
nal authority. 

The third most notable element of this social sys- 
tem is the ascendancy of the sacerdotal order, — the 
representatives of that external and superhuman 
authority in which the Hindoo solely confides. To 
the priestly class, even princes yield precedence. 26 
With them rest all judicial functions. 27 Their au- 
thority is maintained not by brute force, but by 
supernatural means. 28 The courts of Heaven inter- 
fere to protect their dignity, so that to strike a Brah- 
min renders one liable to imprisonment in hell for a 
thousand years. 29 Finally, " whatever exists in the 
universe is in effect the wealth of the Brahmin ; since 
he is entitled to it by his primogeniture and pre-emi- 
nence of birth." 3° These high prerogatives, it is 
true, have been greatly weakened under Mahometan 
and British rule ; above all, by the usurpations of 
the military class, holding in their hands that power 

28 Menu, Institutes, i. 96. 27 Ibid., viii. 1, 9, &c. 

28 Ibid., ix. 313, &c. 29 Ibid., xi. 207. 

so Ibid., i. 110.. 



24 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

of the sword which is often stronger than any theory. 
Nevertheless, the complete ascendancy of the spiritual 
power has always remained a prime element in the 
Hindoo ideal of society. 

We have thus followed the evolution of the Hindoo 
tendency through every department of thought and 
life. The idealism that finds nothing real in the sen- 
sible world, the fatalism founded upon an utter dis- 
dain of human nature, the constant engrossment with 
the affairs of futurity, the apathy and superstition 
consequently engendered, the doctrine of transmigra- 
tion and the ascetic temper, the weakening of the 
moral sense and the subordination of reason to faith, 
the repression of all individualit}^ by onerous restric- 
tions of the law, and the ascendancy of the spiritual 
power, — these are the essential characteristics of the 
Indian system. It was, from many points of view, 
a sublime impulse of the human spirit which had 
created so profound a faith in the unseen and eternal 
world, — which had filled the soul with a sense of its 
sinfulness, — which had taught to all lessons of child- 
like trust and devotion. And yet from the unchecked 
and complete development of this impulse what 
mournful results have sprung ! Starting from so 
fair an ideal, Indian civilization ends at last in the 
abasement of the noblest elements of human nature, 
in a fatal incapacity for progress, in universal apathy 
and hopeless indifference to the true interests of 
mankind. 



THE CIVILIZATION OF INDIA. 25 



We come now to notice the efforts at reformation 
that were made in the course of Indian history. Of 
course', the counter-impulse of the human spirit — 
the proud consciousness of human dignity — could 
not be entirely destroyed. In spite of every restric- 
tion, it would be constantly striving to assert itself: 
it would struggle to arrest this one-sided develop- 
ment, to bring in a new order of ideas more in accord 
with its own spirit. In the earlier periods of Indian 
history, this desire of reformation vaguely manifests 
itself in two ways, — practically, in the struggles of 
the military class against the priestly power ; 31 specu- 
latively, in the rise and spread of the Sankhya phil- 
osophy. But the time came when the revolt grew 
into something more than a spasmodic struggle, — 
when discontent ripened into revolution, — when, by 
the genius of one man, all the different elements of 
opposition, both practical and speculative, were united 
in a memorable crusade against the Brahminical sys- 
tem. This great leader was Sakyamuni ; and the 
revolt organized by his genius we call Buddhism, 

Sakyamuni, himself born of a royal family, was not 
apt to ignore that practical element of opposition 

31 Rothe, Literutur und Geschichte d<s Weda, 119; Menu, Institutes, 
vii. 40, Beq.; Wheeler, History of India, i. 160. Of similar import is 
the origin of the Jain belief, — that primitive heresy of India. " The 
Jains," say the orthodox, "are misguided cshatryas," or members of 
the military caste. (Colebrooke, Misc. Essays, i. oT'J.) 
2 



26 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

represented by the struggle of the military class 
against the priests. Hence we find that a funda- 
mental characteristic of his religion was its contempt 
for those caste distinctions upon which the ascen- 
dancy of the Brahmins was founded. 32 The principle 
of Buddhism is that of absolute equality : into its 
sacred order all men, whatever their birth, may gain 
admission. The Brahmin and the Sutra stand upon 
a common level : 33 the lowest orders may attain to 
the highest ecclesiastical honors ; ^ may, above all, 
gain deliverance and final salvation. Thus the new 
religion becomes a doctrine of universal charity, offer- 
ing a common salvation to all. 35 While Brahminism 
seeks the aggrandizement of a class, Buddhism is a 
free gospel to be preached to the high and the low : in 
that lies the chief secret of its first brilliant success. 

With equal boldness, Buddhism availed itself of 
the speculative element in the opposition to Brahmin- 
ism. There is still a wide difference of opinion con- 
cerning the relations of Sakyamuni to the philosophy 
of his time : to some his teachings seem to have been 

32 Burnouf, Introduction a VHistoire du Buddhisme, i. 14 ; and all the 
authorities. 

33 In wera Wahrheit ist und Lehre der ist gliicklich, ist Brah- 
mana." (Das Dhammapadam, 393, trans, by Weber in Zeitsck. d. 
Deutsch. Morg. Gesellschqfl, xiv.) 

34 Hiouen Thsang (Memoires sur les Contre'es Occidentales, i. 191) 
recounts a fine legend showing the indifference of the primitive Buddh- 
ists to all distinctions of rank. 

3 * Barth. St. Hilaire, Du Buddhisme, 148, 209, et aL, Burnouf, 217. 



THE CIVILIZATION OF INDIA. 27 

purely speculative ; ^ to others they appear essentially 
ethical and practical ; 37 and there are still others who 
look upon Sakya as a mere enthusiast whose concep- 
tions were all of a crude indefinite kind. 38 "Without 
pretending to decide this question, 39 we say only that 
the chief heresy of the Sankhya philosophy and that 
of Sakyamuni are at heart identical. The Sankhya, 
by affirming the existence of the individual soul, had 
made itself the champion of human personality. 
Sakyamuni carries out this conception of individuality 
to the most daring conclusions. The human sold, he 
teaches, not only exists, but it has the power of de- 
velopment : it may stand at the very summit of exist- 
ence ; it may attain absolute perfection and power. 
More than that, only man can attain this immense ele- 
vation ; even the gods desire to become Buddhas, but 
such aspirations are to be realized only through the 
pathway of human life. 40 Never has humanity been 
glorified elsewhere with so wild an extravagance as 
this. Even Hellenism was satisfied to teach that 
man might sometimes attain the rank of divinity ; 

36 Weber, Indische Litcraturgcschichte, 248. 

37 Koppen, Die Religion des Buddha, ii. 125. 

38 Vassilief, Le Bouddisme, 12, etc. 

89 One thing, however, is certain. The earliest philosophy of the 
Buddhists, whenever formed, was almost entirely modelled after the 
doctrine of the Sankhya: one can hardly doubt the original identity 
of the two systems. (Weber, Die neueatw Forsekvngen auf dan Gtbiet 
des Buddhismus, Tnd. Studien, iii. 182.) 

40 Burnouf, Hist, du Buddhism , i. 197. 



28 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

but Buddhism proclaimed that he might reach an 
elevation towards which even the gods would look 
with envy. Faith in human nature, it would seem, 
could hardly be carried further. 

The revolt, however, did not confine itself to these 
two issues. Sakyamuni found around him a people 
credulous and superstitious in the last degree. They 
were the submissive slaves of authority. Every thing 
was written down for them in their sacred books, 
beyond which they never dreamed of searching for 
the truth. Even Kapila had not dared to cast off 
these chains of authority. He was, as we have seen, 
very anxious to reconcile his heresies with the ancient 
revelation. But Sakya boldly cast the Vedas aside. 
The new religion, in its days of youthful enthusiasm, 
appealed not to authority, but to the common sense 
of mankind. " All that agrees with good sense," said 
its disciples, 41 " is in accord with the truth, and ought 
to be taken for a guide ; and only this has our master, 
Buddha, taught." Nor was this a mere form of words. 
The rationalistic spirit was carried to such extremes, 
that it is difficult to fasten any definite system of 
doctrines upon the nascent faith. Its dogmas, for the 
most part, are a mass of negations, which deny all 
things, and even contradict each other. 

From still another point of view, the Buddhistic 
movement reveals itself as a revolt of the free, proud, 

41 Vassilief, Le Bouddisme, 18. 



THE CIVILIZATION OF INDIA. 29 

self-reliant impulse against the tendencies of the older 
system. The Brahmin was weighed down by a sense 
of human weakness. He had no faith in the free 
energies of the spirit within, but trusted solely to the 
help of some external power. By sacrifice, by pen- 
ance, by prayer, he implored that supernatural aid 
which alone could lift him out of the depths of his 
misery and sinfulness. But Sakyamuni was supremely 
self-reliant. He offered no sacrifice, performed no 
penance, repeated no prayer. He had no faith in any 
power higher than that which dwelt in his own breast. 
He framed no ritual, organized no hierarchy, and built 
no temple. Seated in a cemetery, or under the shade 
of the forest, he preached his gospel of self-deliverance 
to any one who would listen. The way of freedom, 
he taught, lies open to every one. Man, by his own 
unaided efforts, gains all and becomes all. 

Such, then, is the true character of the Buddhistic 
movement. It was an organized revolt of the free, 
proud, self-reliant impulse against that counter ten- 
dency which had so long ruled the life of India. And 
now there comes a question of the most profound 
importance for the purposes of this volume. Did 
Buddhism succeed in accomplishing its design? Did 
it, even when in power, cheek the one-sided tenden- 
cies of Indian life, and arrest the human spirit in its 
progress towards those fatal extremes that we have 
already described ? Did the revolt become a real 
reformation ? 



30 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

To this question but one answer can be returned. 
The Buddhistic movement was not a real reformation. 
It seemed to oppose the prevailing tendency ; but the 
antagonism was superficial, and did not reach the 
roots of the evil. Its doctrines appear to represent a 
counter movement of the human spirit, but at heart 
they are inspired by the ancient impulse. Sakya and 
his followers, in spite of their heresies, were unable 
to emancipate themselves from those fundamental con- 
ceptions which had been inwoven into the very life 
of the Indian people. Their new religion is, after all, 
only a disguised development of the older system. It 
is this which we propose to show. 

Examine, first of all, that doctrine of human equality 
which led to the invalidation of castes. It seems at 
first view a grand and significant reform. But this 
doctrine, so brilliant, so full of promise, was vitiated 
by an incurable and fatal defect. Its theory was that 
all men are equal, not in rights or dignity, but in 
their subjection to the cruel law of births, and to the 
miseries of life. Such a doctrine is evidently nothing 
more than a new development of that old Brahminical 
tendency which had degraded human nature to the 
utmost. It could not and did not work any real 
reform in the social life of India. 

This is clearly shown by the history of castes among 
the Buddhists. Sakya annuls all such distinctions in 
religious life, but he leaves the system untouched as 



THE CIVILIZATION OF INDIA. 31 

a social institution. 42 He recognizes it as the ground- 
work of the political fabric ; 43 he exhibits it as one of 
the inevitable ills of life, from which we are delivered 
only as we are freed from all other entanglements of 
nature. 44 Castes, then, are not a wrong to be righted, 
but a natural and necessary evil to be patiently en- 
dured. Of course, such a view works no reform. To 
this day the system exists in all its enormity among 
a people who have been Buddhists for many centuries. 
In fact, nowhere has despotism been more absolute, 
have human rights been more ruthlessly trampled 
upon, than among the followers of Sakyamuni. 

Nor can it be said that this despotism exists in spite 
of the influences of Buddhism. On the contrary, the 
genius of the religion is friendly to the growth of 
social inequality and oppression. Clearly a doctrine 
of equality teaching that all men are reduced to a 
common level of hopeless misery, did not tend to 
create an heroic freedom -loving spirit, like that 
which put the Greeks so constantly upon their guard 
against any invasion of their liberties. It tended, on 
the contrary, to engender universal apathy in the 
presence of oppression, to produce an utter indiffer- 
ence to all earthly interests, relieved only by a wild 
hope of deliverance in ages immeasurably distant. Its 

*- Burnouf, Hist. Buddhisme Indien. 

4:5 Lassen, fndisclic A/Urthu/nshuide, ii. 440. 

44 Koppen, Die Religion des Buddha, i. 128. 



32 THE SECRET OE CHRISTIANITY. 

cry was : " As well be a slave as a free man here : let 
us seek only to become Budclhas in the great here- 
after." And thus Buddhism employed itself with 
this strange dream concerning the future ; while, in 
the affairs of this world, — in social, political, and 
private life, — it left the old tendency towards self- 
abasement and apathy just as powerful as it had been 
under the Brahminical rule. 

Turn now to the second chief element in the revolt. 
Buddhism here seems to be making a stand against 
the Brahminical contempt for human personality ; but, 
after all, the new religion remains inextricably en- 
tangled in the old conceptions. The Buddhistic doc- 
trine, notwithstanding its specious show of faith in 
human nature, as utterly ignores the real personality 
of man as do the teachings of Brahminism. For the 
supreme estate of Buddha is to be attained through 
the annihilation of all volition, of memory, under- 
standing, and self-consciousness, — of every energy 
that belongs to the human soul. When, one by one, 
these elements of human nature are cast aside, when 
human life has faded into simple abstract being, wrapt 
in absolute repose and utter unconsciousness, then 
man reaches the summit of existence. The soul gains 
its vaunted deliverance only through the sacrifice of 
itself. 

Out of the countless discussions which have taken 
place concerning the character of Nirvana^ — out even 



THE CIVILIZATION OF INDIA. 83 

of the many contradictions in relation to this matter 
which the Buddhist books contain, — we can extract 
one constant and fundamental conception : Nirvana 
implies the utter extinction of human personality. 
It is useless to go beyond this, to attempt to decide 
whether it implies absolute annihilation or not. The 
conception of Nirvana is one that must seem altogether 
different to different orders of thought. To our West- 
ern individualism, it can only mean the utter annihila- 
tion of existence. To the Oriental, revelling in dreams 
of the absolute, it seems the sole reality. All else is 
illusory, — has no real existence. But Nirvana is. 45 , 
It is devoid of all conceivable attributes, but still it 
has its own proper and essential character. 40 It is the 
state where all phenomena, whether internal or ex- 
ternal, are annihilated; where the notion of individu- 
ality, of me or mine, vanishes for ever; where we enter 
the sphere of absolute existence. 47 

In such a doctrine there was no element of reforma- 
tion, — nothing that could arouse the depressed and 
cowering genius of Indian life. Buddhism was un- 
able to cast off that primal curse of Hindoo thought, — 

45 Hardy, Eastern Monachism, 297. 4ti Ibid., 291. 

47 Vassilief, Le Bouddisme, 383. This is the doctrine of the Pra- 
canga, — the school which in Thibet is regarded as the official one. 
[Ibid., 326.) Vassilief, it is true, describes the primitive doctrine as 
that of utter annihilation. [Ibid., 93.) But to us it seems more 
probable that the rude dialectic of those days was not always able to 
discriminate between absolute existence and non-existence. 
2* c 



84 THE SECBET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

the belief that self-consciousness, volition, conscience, 
and all powers of the soul, are fetters which bind up 
to the painful illusions of nature, and from which we 
must seek deliverance as much as from the miseries 
of phj^sical existence. The new theory is only the 
old one under a strange disguise. With all its fan- 
tastic dreams of the future, it inspires no genuine and 
effective faith in human nature ; leaves conscience, 
free thought, and every native energy of the soul, in 
as low esteem as before. Its ideal is not the develop- 
ment but the annihilation of manhood. In fine, 
Buddhism departed from the beaten path of Brah- 
minism : it wandered about in a wilderness of subtle- 
ties, and came back to its original starting-point at 
last. 

We see this with equal clearness when we compare 
the ethical systems of the two religions. The Buddh- 
istic morality is, fundamentally, in accord with the 
Brahminical. It makes the same fatal mistake con- 
cerning the basis of moral obligations. It teaches 
that the distinctions between virtue and vice belong 
to that phenomenal, transient order of things from 
which the soul should constantly seek deliverance. 48 
It has no conception of the right as an eternal and 
immutable principle, obedience to which, without ref- 
erence to any ulterior considerations, constitutes the 
highest ideal of the human spirit. On the con- 

48 Hodgson, Illustrations of Buddhism, 69. 



THE CIVILIZATION OF INDIA. 35 

trary, men are to be virtuous merely as a matter of 
selfish policy ; because, through obedience to the law, 
they gain eternal happiness. 49 Sakyamuni, we are 
told, 50 allured the multitude by the grandeur of the 
future recompenses which he offered to them. And, 
universally, Buddhism makes no appeal to the con- 
science or the moral sense: its morality is that of 
calculation and expediency. 51 In that respect, it has 
intensified one of the worst defects of the Brahmini- 
cal system. 

Even when the new faith attempted to depart from 
the doctrine of the old, it soon yielded to the pressure 
that was constantly forcing it back upon the beaten 
path. The great fault of Brahminism was that it 
undervalued the moral. It had made religion con- 
sist, not in doing right, but in believing certain 
doctrines, and observing certain rites. At first 
Buddhism seems to have opposed this tendency to 
divorce religion from morality. It taught that salva- 
tion was to be gained, not through belief, but through 
the practice of virtue. The appellation of the prim- 
itive Buddhist was Chramana, — " one who con- 
ducts himself virtuously." But this feeling did 
not last long. In the later system QMakhaiana) the 
ethical element is completely overshadowed by the 

49 Hodgson, Illustrations of Buddhism, 73. 

W Burnouf, Hist. Buddhisme, i. 199. 

51 Barthe'lemy St. Hilaire, Du Buddhisme, 217. 



86 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

speculative. Intellectual abstraction, we are told, 
constitutes the chief pathway of salvation : morality 
is not sufficient for deliverance. 52 And in the now 
dominant philosophy it is said, that virtue will bring 
to us great rewards ; but only the perfection of intelli- 
gence will lead to the bliss of Nirvana. Thus Buddh- 
ism completely surrenders to that bad tendency of 
the Hindoo spirit which makes morality of far less 
importance than belief. 

It was precisely the same with the intellectual life 
of Buddhism. The spirit of free inquiry which seems 
to have been aroused at first, was nothing more than 
the evanescent froth of a revolutionary period. 
Buddhistic literature has preserved hardly a trace of 
such a spirit, but is everywhere marked by the same 
deep distrust of reason, the same unquestioning cre- 
dulity and servile submissiveness to authority that char- 
acterized the rival system. The Buddhists, it is said, 53 
have none but sacred books. There being no inter- 
nal criterion of the truth, a writing must come in- 
dorsed by some divine authority before it can claim 
the least attention ; and, upon the other hand, works 
thus authenticated receive the most extravagant ven- 
e ration. 54 In fact, the literal worship of the sacred 

52 Schlagintweit, Buddhism in Thibet, 65. 

53 Barthelemy St. Hilaire, Du Buddhisme, 246. 
64 Lotus de la bonne Loi, Burnouf, 15. 



THE CIVILIZATION OF INDIA. 37 

books forms an essential part of the religion in its 
later forms. 55 

The intense supernaturalism which had proved so 
disastrous to the old civilization was also reproduced 
with even wilder extravagance in the new. The 
morbid contempt of the present life, the engrossment 
with the affairs of futurity, the love of the marvellous, 
the superstitious spirit that was never weary of framing 
new fables concerning the invisible world, — all these 
find a firmer ally, if possible, in Buddhism than in its 
older rival. It is the same with the fatalistic tendency. 
According to the orthodox Buddhistic philosophy, the 
universe has no sovereign but the mighty chain of 
causes and effects, — a brute blind necessity, a physi- 
cal or mechanical compulsion, governing the will of 
man as it moulds the life of a tree or a stone. In 
fact, the fatalism of the Brahmins has not been 
merely reproduced : it has been brought out into a 
clearer light, and dwelt upon with a stronger empha- 
sis. 56 

But we need not further pursue this comparison 
between the two religions. Enough has already been 
said to prove that the history of Buddhism has been 
marked by a continual relapse into the old Brahmini- 
cal modes of thought : the specious show of antago- 
nism fades gradually away, until the new system 

55 Hardy, Eastern Monachism, 192. 

66 Lassen, Indische Alterthumskun 'e, iii. 397. 



38 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

presents no really essential difference from the religion 
which it attempted to supplant. The Buddhistic faith 
appeared at a very corrupt era in Hindoo life. 57 It 
appealed impressively to all those who were discon- 
tented with the existing order of things. It received 
the cordial support, or at least the secret favor, of the 
royal and military classes; it was welcomed gladly 
by the common people, the poor, the outcasts, — by 
all those who had been humiliated and crushed under 
the rule of the Brahmins. 58 But, after all, it was the 
movement of men discontented and restless under the 
yoke, not really emancipated from their bondage to 
the old ideas. It was the struggle of a revolutionary 
spirit, but of that spirit groping in darkness, help- 
lessly entangled in the toils from which it seeks 
deliverance. There was the dim perception of a new 
ideal, but no power of attaining it. There was 
revolt, but no progress nor reform. Buddhism, in 
fine, was the outward revolt of those inwardly en- 
slaved. Its development was marked by a continual 
retreat. Its final results were a complete surrender to 
the spirit of the past. 

We are now prepared to understand that great 
enigma of Indian history, — the failure and overthrow 
of Buddhism. At first carrying all before it, and 

57 Barthelemy St. Hilaire, Du Buddhisme, 150. 

58 Burnouf, Hist. Buddhisme, Indien, i. 145, 249. 



THE CIVILIZATION OF INDIA. 39 

everywhere triumphant over the older faith, it at last 
faded so completely from Hindoo life that hardly a 
vestige remained. The ordinary explanation that is 
given of this overthrow is that it was the result of 
persecution. But that can hardly satisfy any thought- 
ful mind ; especially when it is remembered that 
Buddhism had become the established religion of the 
land, and was therefore far better able to persecute 
than its rival. The true explanation — never before 
given — has already been foreshadowed in the previous 
pages. But, in order to make it absolutely clear and 
convincing, it is necessary to dwell for a moment 
upon those concessions to the popular feeling which 
Brahminism made in order to regain its ancient 
supremacy. 

Chief among these concessions was the engrafting 
upon Brahminical theology of the doctrine of incar- 
nations. No hint of this dogma is to be found in the 
Vedic literature, where the human element is altogether 
ignored, and the gods are represented only as vague, 
colorless personifications of the abstract forces of 
nature. In the epic poetry, it is true, there are 
allusions to the theory of incarnation ; but these are 
probably interpolations made at a comparatively 
modern period. 59 Finally, however, the new forma- 

59 Lassen (Indische Alterthumskunde, i. 489) quotes a remark of 
Schlegel that all the chapters in the Ram ay ana alluding to incarna- 
tions might be stricken out without injury to the continuity of the 
poem. 



40 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

tion of BrahminisHi begins ; and this doctrine takes its 
place in the official theology. 60 There is developed a 
new order of divinities, who assume a less abstract 
character, and even condescend to be clothed in 
human forms. These divinities descend to the earth, 
endure the vicissitudes of mortality, mingle freely 
among men, take part in human labors and sports, 
even engage in riotous festivities and voluptuous 
intrigues. In a word, the mythology of the Puranic 
scriptures bears upon its surface no inconsiderable 
resemblance to the intensely humanistic conceptions 
of Greek religion. 

In all this we behold an evident attempt to concili- 
ate a spirit dissatisfied with the abstract impersonal 
divinities of the primitive theology. It attempted 
to humanize the Divine, to bring the gods down to 
the level of human sympathy and comprehension, 
to bridge over that vast gulf which the old theology 
had placed between God and man. 61 To this attempt 
at conciliation, the people responded with a singular 
enthusiasm. The worship of the divine incarnations 
everywhere supplanted that once paid to the Vedic 
divinities : the sacred writings, the ceremonial, the 
doctrinal formulas, and, above all, the real underlying 

60 Weber (Indische Studien, ii. 169) claims that the doctrine — bor- 
rowed from Christianity — was introduced after the Christian era. 
But Lassen (Ind. Alt., ii. 1107, seq.) clearly proves the contrary. 

61 Duncker, Geschichte des Alterthums, ii. 233, seq. 



THE CIVILIZATION OF INDIA. 41 

spirit of the original system, — are retained ; but by the 
side of all these there arose a new order of divinities 
that totally engrossed the popular attention. 62 Thus 
Brahminism became inconsistent with itself; but for 
reasons now quite apparent, these very inconsistencies 
disarmed its great antagonist and preserved its as- 
cendancy over the Indian people. 

In philosophy, the same purpose of conciliation is 
evinced in the attempt to harmonize the orthodox 
faith with the opposing doctrines of the Sankhya. By 
an ingenious eclecticism, the Bhagavat Gita — that 
most philosophical exponent of modern Brahminism 
— admits the existence of individual souls, while re- 
taining the Vedic doctrine of the Universal Spirit. 
It divides human nature into two parts, — the one being 
the individual soul ; the other the Universal Spirit, 
manifested as a sort of vitalizing agency. 63 So the 
Vishnu-Purana adopts the Sankhya philosophy in all 
its details, so far as they relate to nature and to man, 
and attempts to harmonize its principles with the 
orthodox theology by vaguely teaching that indi- 
vidual souls are secondary forms of the Universal 
Spirit. 64 In the Bhagavat-Purana, likewise, 65 and 
everywhere throughout the new formation of Brah- 

62 Kothe (quoted in Miiller, Anc. Sanscrit Lit. 60). 

63 Bhagavat- Gita, ii. 7, seq.; also Thomson's Introduction. 

64 Vishnu-Purana, trans. Wilson, 640 ; also chap. i. book ii. 

65 Bhagavat-Purana, trad. Burnouf, i. 525, seq. ; also, Preface, p. vL 
Burnouf sees in this only an encyclopedic tendency. ' 



42 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

minism, the same eclectic tendency is manifest. 
There is even evinced a desire to bring the new 
conceptions nearer to the popular comprehension, by 
divesting them, to some extent at least, of the subt- 
lety and obscure mysticism which characterized the far 
more ancient eclecticism of Pantajali. 66 A philosoph- 
ical movement of this kind can have but one purpose. 
Eclecticism is a concession to the revolutionary spirit 
of the age amid which it arises. It is an attempt 
to appease the craving for reform by a compromise 
which seems to grant all, but really surrenders 
nothing. 

In the social organization of Brahminism we can 
expect but few changes ; for here the system was so 
compactly knit together that to yield any thing was 
to abandon all. The Puranas, therefore, display the 
same reverence for the system of castes as do the Insti- 
tutes of Menu, and are equally jealous of any infringe- 
ment of its laws. But even here we are not without 
indications of the purpose to conciliate. The very 
existence of the Puranic scriptures marks a conces- 
sion on the part of the Brahmins to the lower orders. 
The Vedas were the almost exclusive patrimony of 
the priestly caste ; and this more modern revelation 
was compiled in the interest of those other classes to 
whom the reading of the older scriptures had been 

66 W. v. Humboldt (Ueber die unter dem Namen Bhagavad-Gita 
bekannte Episode des Maha-Bharata, Werke, i. 28). 



THE CIVILIZATION OF INDIA. 43 

for ages interdicted. 67 To our Occidental thought, it 
seems a slight concession ; but it was in reality of 
great significance. It indicates a desire, on the part 
of the Brahmins, to soften the hardships of their 
system even in that matter which has always proved 
the most stubborn and intractable element of a regime, 
— the rigor of its social distinctions. 

And while Brahminism was pursuing this policy of 
conciliation, endeavoring to accommodate itself so far 
as possible to the popular demands, Buddhism was 
obeying the inexorable law of its development. The 
revolutionary spirit, fettered upon every side, power- 
less to effect any real reform, was exhausting itself 
in useless disputations and dissensions. Without 
genuine ideas or principles to contend for, its strug- 
gle against Brahminism becomes a war of words and 
logical subtleties. The extent to which this wordy 
warfare was carried is almost inconceivable. Every 
thing was made to hinge upon the fickle fortunes of 
debate. Death was the penalty which the vanquished 
disputant paid for his lack of logical skill j 68 and the 
religion of a great kingdom often depended upon the 
issue of a crude and incoherent discussion. This dis- 
putatious temper, into which the critical spirit, bereft 



f 7 Bhagavat-Purana, Preface by Burnouf. 

68 In one legend, the king says to the vanquished disputant, "It 
is written in our ancient laws, that whoever is vanquished in discus- 
sion should be put to death." (Hiuuen-Thsang, ii. 159.) 



44 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

of ideas, must always glide, was carried into the "in- 
terior life of the Buddhistic communities. Acrimoni- 
ous disputes arise concerning the most insignificant 
matters ; dissensions are engendered, and, when these 
pass into open quarrel, the Brahmins enter quietly in 
and take possession of the convent. 69 Evidently, a 
revolution of this kind, without genuine convictions, 
torn by internal dissensions, appealing only to the 
popular passion for debate, can have but little hope 
of permanent success. Buddhism failed because it 
was incapable of a single work which the old religion 
could not perform equally well. There was, then, no 
place for it in. India. A pauper in ideas, restless and 
discontented in spirit, it emigrated, and, like many 
another emigrant who has failed miserably in his 
native country, it has flourished marvellously in a 
foreign land. 70 

Let it be remembered, as we conclude, that the 
modifications through which Brahminism assured its 
own supremacy constituted no real reform of Indian 
life : they lay only upon the surface, and did not affect 
the inner spirit of the system. The concessions that 
were made accomplished their purpose : they concili- 

69 Hiouen-Thsang, ii. 104. 

70 Cunningham [Bhilsa Topes, 167) finds the cause of the Buddh- 
istic failure to be the closing of all roads to salvation except that 
through the clerical orders. But the explanation, like the others gen- 
erally given, is superficial. In this respect, Brahminism could claim 
no advantage over its rival. 



THE CIVILIZATION OF INDIA. 45 

ated the elements of discontent and revolt, bnt they 
supplied no real need of Hindoo life. Clothed with 
a specious appearance of reform, they were, in reality, 
only a new development of that ruling tendency from 
which the Hindoo has never been able to emancipate 
himself. The doctrine of incarnation, for instance, 
is but a device, — it satisfies no longing of the soul 
after a divine, living personality. The incarnate God 
of the new theology is, after all, an abstract being, — 
the impersonal energy of the older faith, clothed for 
a moment in the disguise of a human form. As the 
Vishnu-Purana says, 71 the forms of men are assumed 
by the Absolute One " in his sport ; " and these sportive 
illusions may be multiplied by thousands, according 
to the caprice of the God. 72 EvidentJy this Absolute 
One, wrapped for a moment in fleshly disguises, is a 
being radically different from the divinities of the 
Greek Olympus. That intimate union between the 
divine and the human, which the Grecian mythology 
so brilliantly illustrates, was a conception that Hindoo 
thought has never been able to grasp. These incar- 
nate divinities are just as far removed from real human 
life as were the deified forces of nature that consti- 
tuted the Vedic Pantheon. 

In like manner, the philosophical eclecticism of the 
new formation was altogether superficial and barren 
of results. It was utterly powerless to create that 

n Vishnu-Purana, 656. 72 Bhagavat-Gita, ii. 



46 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

real faith in human individuality — that enthusiastic 
reverence for conscience, reason, and the various 
energies of our spiritual nature — which the Hindoo 
so sadly needed. In a word, these new conceptions 
engrafted upon Brahminism accomplished nothing 
except to perpetuate the sj^stem. 

Such, then, is the history of the Hindoo spirit. A 
peculiar tendency, domineering over it from the be- 
ginning, has produced a one-sided development that 
has proved most disastrous to the popular life. We 
have witnessed the struggles of the human spirit 
against this one-sided system, and have seen them 
end in utter failure. The Indian people have re- 
belled against some of the superficial features of the 
system, as in the Buddhistic revolt, but have never 
been able to free themselves from its fundamental 
tendencies : their attempts at reform have proved 
to be only new phases of the original development ; 
the doctrines which seemed so revolutionary were 
in reality only the old principles clothed in new 
disguises. In spite of all apparent antagonism, re- 
volts, and attempted reformation, that peculiar ten- 
dency which, develops one side of the human nature, 
but paralyzes the other ; which fosters reverence, 
devotion, and a sublime faith in things eternal, but 
crushes out all freedom of thought, self-reliance, en- 
terprise, and manly dignity, — has never lost its hold 
upon Indian life. After thirty centuries of trial, the 



THE CIVILIZATION OF INDIA. 47 

Hindoo spirit has failed to draw from its own resources 
any principle upon which a true reform might be 
based : it has only been able to carry out the one- 
sided development begun so many ages ago, to still 
wilder and more ruinous extremes. 



48 THE SECRET- OF CHRISTIANITY. 



CHAPTER II. 



HELLENIC CIVILIZATION. 



THE civilization of Greece is the product of the 
opposite impulse to that which ruled the life of 
India. Greek faith looked within : it found the divine 
in the human. The chief Olympian divinities are not 
mere personifications of the forces of nature ; they are 
not incarnations nor emanations of abstract being, 
clothed for a moment in the illusory forms of earth : i 
they are a race of immortal and invisible heroes, 
endowed with every essential characteristic of human 
nature. 2 In such a theology there was no room for 
that conception of the infinite or the absolute which 
so imperiously dominates the faith of India. All the 
Greek gods have finite attributes ; they are not om- 
niscient, but know much ; they are not almighty, 
although they have great power ; they are not omni- 
present, but move about from place to place with 
inconceivable rapidity. Their moral finiteness is 

1 Hartung, Religion der Griechen, i. 193. 

2 Welcker, Griechische Gotterlehre, i. 238. Heraclitus's summary of 
Greek theology is well known. 



BELLENIG CIVILIZATION. 49 

still more clearly marked : they are sensual, jealous, 
meddlesome, even untruthful and malignant. 3 Every 
essential element, good or bad, in the nature of man. 
finds its prototype in the Greek Olympus. 

The Greek view of the universe is also directly 
opposed to the Indian or Oriental. We have seen 
how Hindoo thought, in the development of its rev- 
erence for Nature, had been carried step by step until 
it reached a profound idealism, — until it learned to 
look upon the physical world as the mere shadow of 
an eternal and immutable universe reposing in the 
bosom of God. Such conceptions found no real nor 
permanent abiding-place in the Hellenic spirit. The 
faith of the Greek was concentrated upon man and 
human nature. He had nothing of that reverence 
for the outward which would have led him to the 
conception of a spiritual universe veiled behind the 
transitory things of earth. He looked upon the outer 
world from the stand-point of plain common-sense : 
he found there what sensation revealed and nothing 
more. 

Concerning the attempts made by certain philoso- 
phers to introduce more idealistic modes of thought 
we have soon to speak. Suffice' it now that such 
conceptions remained always as strange to the people 
of Greece as they were natural to the people of India. 

3 Pausanias, ii. 33; Plato, Republic, iii. 390; Herodotus, i. 32, 
vii. 10. 

3 D 



50 THE SECltET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Homer, as Plato clearly saw, 4 was a pure materialist ; 
and his teachings never ceased to be the standard of 
religions orthodoxy. In the Homeric belief, there is 
no recognition of spirit, except as something unsub- 
stantial, shadowy, and ghost-like : it is the body 
which forms the true personality of man ; and even 
the gods are of an essentially material nature. 5 And, 
throughout, the Greek theory is one of development, 
not of emanation. Even the divine and the human 
have been developed from the grossness of chaotic 
matter. The earth, as Hesiod says, 6 is the mother of 
gods and men. 

Man, then, had sprung from the lowest origins : 
born of the earth, he had risen to his present eleva- 
tion by a magnificent process of self-development. 
Thus the Greek held fast to his spirit of boundless 
self-reliance, his supreme confidence in human nature 
and its poAvers. He had no official theology. His 
morality was derived from no divine revelation. He 
first established the supremac}^ of conscience, — made 
Iris own nature the final arbiter in questions of right 
and wrong. " There is," says Menander, 7 " a morality 
founded upon the nature of man." " Heaven," says 
Plato, for once in accord with the national sentiment, 

4 Plato, Theaetetus, 152. 

5 Nagelsbach, Horn. Theologie, 381. 

6 Theog., 45, 106; Op. 108. See Scholia in Gaisford's edition, 110. 

7 St. Justin, Monarchic/,, in Maury's Hist, des Religions de la Grece, 
hi. 5. 



HELLENIC CIVILIZATION. 61 

" lias granted other gifts to a few, but the convictions 
of duty are bestowed upon all." 8 

Thus the ethical system finds altogether a new 
basis. To the Oriental, the good was only the means 
to an end : it was a law imposed by external authority, 
which men obeyed through fear of punishment or hope 
of reward. But to the Greek, the good was itself the 
end : a virtuous life was the crowning excellence of 
human development. Whatever vague fear of future 
retribution was sometimes felt, was merely supple- 
mentary to this, — served only to furnish an addi- 
tional incentive to those who were too feebly impressed 
by the intrinsic beauty and grandeur of virtue. 

With such conceptions of human nature, a firm 
belief in moral freedom was necessarily associated. 
In the Homeric poetry, a vague conception of fate is 
sometimes presented, — relic of a rude primitive age 
before the Greek had begun to assert his faith in 
human nature. But this mysterious power of fate, 
so vaguely presented, is somehow conditioned by the 
energies of man : its decrees are often modified or 
entirely reversed. 9 By a man's own free personality 
his character has been formed, and- thereon the bur- 
den of responsibility lies. The idea of freedom w r as 
brought out more and more clearly in the advance 
of Hellenic civilization. Fatalistic ideas may some- 
times be presented by the philosophers ; they may 

8 Plato, Protagoras, 322, D. 9 Odyssey, a, 33. 



52 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

even lie in the background of the popular faith, as 
the dim vestiges of pre-Hellenic thought : but the 
poetry, the art, the religion, the public and private 
spirit of the Grecian people, are all animated by an 
invincible faith in the moral freedom of man. 

Such, then, is the system of thought that from first 
to last held sway in Grecian civilization : its concep- 
tions of God, of man, and the universe, are seen to 
be directly derived from a tendency the exact oppo- 
site of that which ruled the life of India. Turning 
now to the results of this system, we designate as the 
most excellent of all, — the establishment of civiliza- 
tion upon the basis of individual liberty. 

The people of India emerged from barbarism only 
through the sacrifice of their freedom. A divine 
revelation creating fixed institutions and modes of 
life, the supremacy of the priesthood, the constant 
subordination of reason to faith, habits of submissive- 
ness and of reverence for authority established among 
the people, — these are the stepping-stones of Oriental 
civilization. But it is the imperishable glory of 
Greece that she was able to dispense with all such 
aids as these. Alone among all the nations of an- 
tiquity, she passed into the highest stages of ancient 
civilization, without sacrificing the free, proud, self- 
reliant spirit of her primitive life. Hence came that 
enchanting naturalness, that freedom and native grace, 
combined with the most perfect culture, which forms 



HELLENIC CIVILIZATION. 53 

the peculiar charm of Hellenic life. Hence came, 
also, that spirit of free inquiry and savage disdain for 
authority, united with the highest capacity for abstract 
thought and patient investigation. In the age of 
pure Hellenism, hardly a trace is to be found of that 
commentatorial spirit so universal among the thinkers 
of India. The Greek thinker is a critic and not a 
commentator : he leans uj)on no authority ; he trusts 
to himself and reason. And so everywhere, the ideal 
of Hellenic civilization is the free development of 
human personality and all its powers. 

Another signal service of Greece to mankind was 
in the development of art. The impulse which con- 
trolled the life of India rendered the highest aesthetic 
culture there impossible. Hindoo thought, absorbed 
in the contemplation of the spiritual, is plunged into 
a constant dream so far as sensuous life is concerned ; 
and all its art is marked by the very characteristics 
which are so familiarly presented to us in our dreams. 
In Hindoo poetry, all is vague and shadowy : there is 
an utter incongruity of details, an improbability, a 
lack of symmetry, a disposition to wander off into 
endless episodes, — all qualities that are essentially 
dreamlike. But the Hellenic spirit was strangely 
indifferent to all these spiritualistic reveries amid 
which Oriental idealism was lost : it was engrossed 
only with the present and the actual. To the Greek 
even the supernatural is eminently natural : the gods 



54 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

are but men clothed with a more perfect beauty ; 
Olympus is only another Greece steeped in a more 
brilliant sunlight. Everywhere we find the same 
naturalness, the same precision of detail, the same 
defmiteness of outline, — all attesting that clearness 
of conception upon which the genesis of art depends. 
The shadowy creations of Hindoo fancy are often 
magnificent and even sublime : but they lack artistic 
order and proportion ; and consequently, when the 
sculptor attempted to express these dreamy concep- 
tions in the rigid forms of statuary, he achieved only 
the grotesque and the monstrous. 10 But when Gre- 
cian genius had eliminated from its conceptions every 
dreamlike element, when the ideal was presented 
with the perfect clearness and the precise outlines of 
the actual, then sculpture and painting overcame 
their last obstacle, and the triumph of art began. 11 
These were indeed bright and shining products of 
Hellenic civilization ; but along with them went the 
most fatal defects. The same impulse which had 
generated intellectual freedom and aesthetic culture 
produced that intense worldliness of spirit, that dread 
of death, that doubt of immortality, that decay of the 



10 Schnaase, Kunsl-Geschichte, i. 188. 

11 It is noteworthy that the era of the Buddhistic revolt in India, 
when life approached nearer to the Hellenic type than ever before or 
since, was marked by a very great advance in artistic development. 
(Lassen, Indische Alttrthumskunde, ii. 513, seq.) 



HELLENIC CIVILIZATION. 55 

religious sentiment, which finally covered classical life 
with such deep gloom and despair. 

A stranger to those idealistic conceptions, which 
made the earth seem only the dim shadow of unseen 
realities, the Greek was only able to conceive of life. 
as in some way bound up with material forms. To 
him that alone was beautiful that came clothed in 
sensuous forms ; and when human life cast off any of 
the essential attributes of matter it lost so much of 
enjoyment and perfection. Hence the faith in the 
immortalit}^ of the soul did not flourish well on 
Hellenic soil. Pausanias speaks of it as a doctrine 
of Oriental origin, which had been embraced only by 
a few of the people. 12 Certain it is that the faint in- 
timations of a future life contained in the Homeric 
poems are of the gloomiest and most repulsive kind. 
It is painted as a vapid, nerveless existence, almost 
bereft of consciousness, passed amid a murky twilight, 
dull and disagreeable in the last degree. 13 These 
gloomy conceptions remained invincible through all 
subsequent ages. To the Grecian people, plunged 
into worldliness, death was as hateful as the order 
and beauty of earthly life was enchanting. 14 The 
thought of the grave inspired an unconquerable dread, 
against which there was only the feeble defence of 

12 Descriptio Graeciae, iv. 82-4. 

13 Kagelsbach, Horn. T eologie, 380, 414, etc. 
u Welcker, Griechiscke Golterlehre, i. 804. 



56 THE SECRET OP CHRISTIANITY. 

the voluptuary or the stoic. The future, even when 
believed in, was joyless : because it entailed the loss 
of the corporeal nature, of flesh and blood, of light, 
beauty, and physical power, of every thing that ren- 
dered life desirable to the materialistic temper of the 
Greek. 

This lack of spirituality not only entailed the most 
gloomy and despairing views of the future, but it led 
to the inevitable overthrow of all religious sentiment. 
Indian faith, resting upon a profound basis, has stood 
unimpaired amid all intellectual revolutions. Even 
Buddhism, sceptical at first, soon developed a re- 
ligious sentiment rivalling in depth and intensity that 
of the older system. Brahminism also, while virtu- 
ally forsaking its primitive divinities and modifying its 
former dogmas, has still maintained its ancient spirit 
of faith and reverence. In a word, Indian religion, 
reposing upon a profound spiritualism, has survived 
the destruction of all those external forms and merely 
intellectual conceptions which inevitably fall before 
the advance of human thought. But Greek religion 
had no such power of endurance as this. The Ho- 
meric mythology — a child-like thought possible only 
in the infancy of a race — fostered no faith in the 
infinite, no reverence for spiritual things. The re- 
ligious sentiment rested solely upon persons. There 
had not been developed that broad underlying spirit- 
ualism which is independent of dogmas and myths ; 



HELLENIC CIVILIZATION. bi 

therefore, when the mythology fell, the religion was 
also swept away. The Hellenic system is not essen- 
tially irreligious, but is always overshadowed b}~ the 
possibility of becoming so. As Indian religion tended 
to superstition, so Greek religion led naturally to 
scepticism : it carried within itself the elements of its 
own destruction. 

It was precisely the same with the political institu- 
tions of Greece : noble as they seem upon the sur- 
face, they were vitiated by incurable defects which 
led to their speedy overthrow. First among these 
defects we note the exclusively municipal character 
of the political system. 

The ideal state of classical antiquity was the city. 
In the belief of Demosthenes the gathering of the 
people within the same walls was a condition prece- 
dent to the forming of a free government. 15 The 
typical state of Aristotle was not only a city, but 
one, as he is careful to show, of exceedingly small 
dimensions ; 16 even Plato, the persistent opponent of 
the prevailing tendencies of his age and race, in this 
matter yields to the universal opinion. 17 The cause 
of this exclusively municipal character of ancient 
political institutions is easily explained. Modern 
civilization, in a way hereafter to be indicated, has 
been able to create a sentiment of public unity, by 

15 Demosthenes, In Neaeram, 75; Didot, 1371. 

16 Arist., Polity vii. 4. " Plato, Leges, v. 737. 

3* 



58 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

which the inhabitants of a wide empire are bound 
closely together in spite of all diversity of local 
interest. But classical life could not create such a 
sentiment. The only effective political tie was a 
merely personal one. Among men living in one city, 
meeting constantly in the market-place and in politi- 
cal assemblies, there naturally arose a feeling of 
fellowship, which would be all the stronger if the 
community was a small one. But it was impossible 
to extend this feeling beyond these narrow limits. 
The sentiment of unity was felt only among those 
who dwelt within the city walls : the integrity of a 
great empire could be preserved only by the brute 
force of despotism. The free state of antiquity was, 
necessarily, nothing more than a petty and turbulent 
municipality. 18 The creation of a great empire whose 
inhabitants are free and yet firmly united, that is one 
of the secrets of Christian civilization. 

Another fatal defect in the Grecian polity was the 
system of slavery. And yet this was an indispensa- 
ble part of the political fabric. The development of 
the mechanical arts — without which there can be no 
civilization — demands a systematic organization of 
industry, labor for hire, and other relations of de- 

18 Grote (History Greece, ii. 299), and many other writers, ascribe 
this pettiness of the ancient republics to the configuration of the 
Grecian territory. Our future studies will show still more clearly 
that it was one of the inevitable limitations of classical civilization. 



HELLENIC CIVILIZATION. 59 

pendence which seemed utterly odious to the free, 
proud individualism of the Greek spirit. Manual 
labor may not always have been considered dishonor- 
able ; but the conditions necessary for organized 
industry certainly were. The wisest thinkers of the 
Greek race did not hesitate to declare that the life of 
a hired working-man was ignoble, demoralizing, and 
beneath the dignity of a free citizen. 19 Slaves, there- 
fore, were necessarily demanded for the proper de- 
velopment of the mechanical arts : slavery was an 
essential part of the social system. Concerning this, 
the most divergent political theories of antiquity are 
in full accord. 20 Greek civilization could secure the 
political liberties of a few, only by enslaving the 
multitude. 21 

19 Aristotle (Politic, vii. 8) totally excludes the working-man from 
the rights of citizenship. Plato is a little more reserved : he grants 
the producing classes a subordinate citizenship ; they stand, however, 
in the same degraded relation to the non-producers that appetite does 
to reason. (Republic, iv. 441.) Xenophon has respect for agriculture, 
but utter contempt for the mechanical arts. ( Oeconomic, iv. 2 ; Didot, 
622.) 

2 « Plato, Leges, ill. 690; Aristot., Politic, 1, 2. 

21 It is further to be noted that Greece, in utter contras-t with India, 
has no conception of a spiritual power. The secular authority has 
the entire direction of religious affairs ; and the citizen is taught to 
accept the established religion as he would any other political institu- 
tion. The priest is simply a minor officer of the state: his functions 
are merely ritualistic (Lobeck, Aglaophamus, ii. 259), and in their 
most important parts are shared by the magistrate and the private 
citizen. (Welcker, Gr. Gotterlehre,\i\. 35.) The priests were not even 
considered as the special guardians and depositaries of theology: 



60 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Such, then, has been the development of that pe- 
culiar tendency which controlled Hellenic life from 
beginning to end. As in India, so in Greece, we find a 
system marked by many noble features, but burdened 
with fatal defects and leading at last to the most disas- 
trous results. Seeking the divine within the human, 
it proclaims the supremacy of conscience, generates -a 
spirit of free inquiry, and steadfastly asserts the moral 
freedom of man. It led to a life of enterprise ; it per- 
fected poetry and art ; it first gave to human thought 
the ideal of popular liberty. But these brilliant re- 
sults only form the brighter colors of a most gloomy 
picture. The Greek, in his reverence for that which 
was within, lost all faith in that which was without. 
He became the victim of a narrow materialism which 
turned in disdainful ignorance from all spiritual 
things, and found delight only amid earthly affairs. 
Hence came that decay of the religious sentiment, 
that steady growth of doubt, that devouring anxiety 
concerning death and despair of the future, which 

religion, says Plutarch, originates in the teachings of the poets, the 
law-givers, and the philosophers. (Dollinger, Gentile and Jew, 203.) 
Often the sacerdotal office was a merely temporary one : the priests 
of Minerva were beardless youths who abandoned their office at 
the approach of manhood. (Pausanias, Desc. Graeciae, x. 34, 8; viii. 
47, 3.) So thoroughly a subordinate officer of the state was the 
priest, that Plato deemed him incompetent for the control of the 
wealth belonging to the temple. {Leges, vi. 761.) In a word, the spirit- 
ual power has no real existence in Greece : even religion becomes a 
function of the universal secularism. 



HELLENIC CIVILIZATION. 61 

rendered Greek life, in spite of its outward beauty, 
one of the most mournful spectacles of antiquity. 
And so, in social life, the founding of society upon the 
basis of slavery ; the degradation of the industrial 
classes ; the idleness and profligacy of the free citizens; 
the puniness and instability of the free states, leading 
inevitably to the establishment of vast despotisms like 
those of Macedon and Rome, — all these were natural 
and necessary products of the Hellenic system. In 
a word, Grecian development went to precisely the. 
opposite extreme from that of India, but it reached 
an equally disastrous end. 

But the Grecian intellect could not be entirely con- 
tent with this one-sided development that was going on 
in the national life. The counter-impulse — the spirit 
of faith, the sense of human sinfulness, the feeling of 
dependence — begins to manifest itself: a protest is 
made against those prevailing tendencies which are be- 
ing carried out to such ruinous extremes. Dim traces 
of such a counter-movement are presented even in the 
Homeric poetry; 22 and much more clearly in the teach- 
ings of Euripides. 23 Above all did the Orphic doc- 
trine stand forth as a special representative of this 

22 Miiller, Lit. Anc. Greece, i. 18 ; Nagelsbach, Horn. Theolorjie, 414.. 
At times the teachings of Homer are so contradictory that all sects 
claim him. (F. Schlegel, Geschichte der Poesie der Griechen, 85.) 

23 Nagelsbach, Nachhomerische Tkeologie, i. 449, 452, etQ. 



62 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

movement. The Orphic literature, says Pausanias, 24 
is far inferior in artistic skill to the Homeric poetry ; 
but it is imbued with a more profound sense of sacred 
things. It had borrowed much directly from Egypt 
and the East. 25 To the humanism of Greece it op- 
posed a true Oriental pantheism. 26 It taught that 
the human soul was an emanation from the soul of 
the universe ; 2T that the present life was a punish- 
ment for crimes committed in a previous existence ; 
that the body was a grave or a prison ; that all 
were subject to the law of transmigration. 28 With 
this a rigid asceticism was combined, and a deep 
sense of human sinfulness demanding constant expia- 
tions and priestly interventions. In a word, behind 
the secret rites of Orpheus, there was veiled a true 
and intense Orientalism seeking to make its home on 
Grecian soil. 

But, without pretending to follow out all the de- 
tails of this movement of protest, we fix our attention 
upon its two most famous leaders. They are Pythag- 
oras and Plato. 



2* Desc. Graeciae, ix. 30, 4. 25 Herodotus, ii. 81. 

26 Hartung, Relig. d. Griechen, 74 ; Nagelsbach, Nachhomerische 
Theologw, i. 101. 

27 "Itaque quod Pythagorei docent animos ex universa mundi 
anima haustos et delibatos esse, idem in Orphei carmine tyvoiKa in- 
scripto enunciatum est." (Lobeck, Aglaophamus, i. 756.) 

28 Gerhard, Orpheus u. die Orphiker, Abhandlungen, 18 et al. ; Nagels- 
bach, etc. 



HELLENIC CIVILIZATION. G3 

Pythagoras, first of all the philosophers, seems to 
have thoroughly comprehended the defects of Hellen- 
ism. He attempted to construct a system of thought 
and life built upon altogether a different basis: he 
sought, consciously or unconsciously, to Orientalize 
the West. The Pythagorean doctrine of numbers 
stands in direct opposition to the precepts of Greek 
sensationalism. It rises above the physical into the 
spiritual. It makes the real universe to consist in a 
combination of ideal principles, bound together by an 
absolute and all-pervading unity. 29 It is a true Ori- 
ental idealism, modified by the Greek instinct for 
order and mathematical proportions. 

Turn now to other parts of the Pythagorean sys- 
tem, and we find it everywhere characterized by the 
same tendencies. It teaches that fundamental tenet 
of Hindoo faith, that the individual soul is an efflux 
from the Universal Spirit. 30 Conjoined with this is 
the doctrine of transmigration, 31 — a feature which, 
by itself, would be sufficient to indicate the Oriental 

29 Aristotle shows an incorrigible tendency to materialize the con- 
ceptions of Pythagoras : he even finds it difficult to distinguish be- 
tween the Pythagorean monads and atoms. {De Anima, i. iv. 16.) 
Another passage of like import {De Coelo, hi. 1, 16, 17) shows his 
inability to do justice to the conceptions of idealists. Sometimes, 
however, he countenances the true view of the Pythagorean num- 
bers, — as representatives of the ideal harmony and proportion which 
characterize the spiritual universe. (Metaph., i. 6.) 

30 Cicero, De Nat. Deorum, i. 11. 

31 Diogenes Laertes, viii. 1, 4, 36 ; Ovid, Metam., xv. 165. 



64 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

tendency of his thought. 32 Furthermore, Pythagoras 
adopts the ascetic ideal of life, — teaches that the body 
is the prison-house of the soul, 33 and establishes an 
almost monastic discipline among his followers. 34 He 
elaborates the doctrine of future retribution, and es- 3 
pecially locates Homer and Hesiod in hell as a token 
of his deep hostility to the national faith, of which 
they were the chief founders. 35 He frowns upon the 
Greek spirit of free inquiry, and inculcates among his 
followers an Oriental reverence for authority which 
became proverbial in after ages. In politics, he stead- 
fastly opposes the democratic tendencies of Hellenic 
life, allies himself with the party of absolutism, and 
labors to secure the supremacy of a speculative order, 
wherein all individualism is to be repressed by estab- 
lishing a community of property and life. 36 In fact, 
there is hardly one essential feature of the Oriental 
system which does not seem to have been incorpo- 
rated into the doctrine of Pythagoras. 

Thus the Pythagorean philosophy is brought forth 
from the deep obscurity by which it has so long been 



32 Nemesius {Be Nat. Hominis, in Grote's Plato, ii. 202, note) sajs 
all Greeks who believed in immortality believed also in /xeTevao/ia- 
Tuoig. Evidently an exaggeration, but it serves to show the Oriental 
character of the two conceptions. 

33 Plato, Phaedo, 62. 

84 Degerando, Hist. Comp. du Syst. de Philos., i. 461. 
35 Maury, Hist, des Relig. de la Grece, i. 355. 
86 Iamblichus, Vita Pyihag., 81. 



HELLENIC CIVILIZATION. 65 

invested : for the first time, its true character and 
design are plainly revealed. It was a protest against 
the ruling impulse of Hellenism: it was an attempt 
to create a sentiment of faith, of dependence, of spir- 
itual need, — to infuse the spirit of the East into the 
life of the West. How signally it failed in this at- 
tempt need hardly be told. 

We come now to one with whom the protest against 
Hellenism reached its climax of intensity and power. 
Plato, above all others, is the representative of the 
movement which sought to reconstruct classical life 
upon a new basis. Against the materialism of the 
West, he opposed a philosophy that ever since has 
been regarded as the most perfect type of idealism. 
It is the same with the Platonic ethics and politics : 
everywhere there is exhibited a spirit of hostility to 
the ruling conceptions of Hellenic thought. 

Turn first to the Platonic ethics, and note how rad- 
ical was the departure from the prevailing modes of 
thought. The Hellenic system of morals was founded 
upon the idea of development. With a proud faith 
in human nature, it pictured the highest excellence 
as resulting from the proper culture of all the emo- 
tions and passions that dwelt within the soul. To 
this ideal of development, Plato opposes the ideal of 
asceticism. 37 Life, he teaahes, is an entanglement of 

37 Michelis, Die Philosophie Platon's, ii. 319. 



06 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

the soul within the meshes of bodily corruption : vir- 
tue consists, not in the prudent culture, but in the 
utter sacrifice, of that emotional nature which is the 
fruit of the soul's union with the grossness of matter. 38 
In the other fundamental question of ethics, Plato was 
equally heretical. The Greek regarded conscience, 
either individual or national, as the supreme tribunal 
in questions of right and wrong ; above all, the pre- 
cepts and customs that had been established by the 
ethical consciousness of many generations had for 
him the authority of revelation. But Plato boldly 
denies the jurisdiction of this tribunal. The individ- 
ual or national conscience, he teaches, is an unsafe 
guide : in the place of the moral intuitions, he would set 
up as the final authority the decisions of a speculative 
class, — a sort of priesthood trained to moral and re- 
ligious studies. 39 A doctrine of this kind was indeed 
a complete reversal of the popular conceptions. 

Closely connected with this denial of the supremacy 
of conscience was Plato's dislike of the intellectual 
freedom which characterized the national life. The 
ordinary man, he teaches, is the victim of a constant 
delusion : only here and there is one to be found who 
can rise above these falsehoods into the regions of 
absolute truth. Hence, the mass of men should not 

38 Philelms, 33. Grote (Plato, ii. 165, note) has noted the similarity 
of the ethics of Plato and the Sankhya. 

39 Gorgias, 500. 



HELLENIC CIVILIZATION. 67 

be permitted freedom of thought : their reason should 
be subordinated to an implicit faith in the infallibility 
of their spiritual rulers. The most perfect type of 
intellectual life was that of Egypt, where all knowl- 
edge was made the special property of the priest- 
hood. 40 In Plato's own ideal state, the utmost 
uniformity of belief 'was to be maintained by law. 
Heresy was to be made punishable with death. 41 
Human thought was to be held in a state of true 
Oriental bondage. 

Turn now to the political principles of this S} T stem. 
In the Platonic commonwealth, all individualism was 
to be rigorously repressed. A despotism, far more 
tyrannous than that established by the Institutes of 
Menu, was everywhere to overshadow the private life 
of the citizen. No innovation upon the established 
order of things was to be permitted even in the mi- 
nutest details of living. 42 In the interests of this con- 
servatism, even the aesthetic instincts of the Greek 
w^ere to be sacrificed ; of the fine arts, only music was 
to be countenanced, and especially was dramatic 
poetry — that fruitful source of innovations and her- 
esies — to be rigorously excluded from the Platonic 
state. 43 Furthermore, all assertion of individual rights 
was to be frowned upon. Wherever it was possible, 
a strict communism was to prevail. Property, wives, 

4 ° Leges, ii. 656. 41 Ibid., x. 909, et seq. 

* 2 Ibid., vii. 797. « Zbid., iii. 701 ; vii. 799. 



b» THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

children, — all were to be held in common, 44 not with 
any licentious design, but simply because the repres- 
sion of individuality — the sacrifice of all the instincts 
and impulses of human nature — forms the true ideal 
of life. And this policy of restriction has never been 
so fully carried out in a Buddhist or mediaeval monas- 
tery as in the political Utopia of Plato. 45 

Such, then, is the Platonic system. In its meta- 
physical, its ethical, and its political conceptions, we 
everywhere recognize the inspiration of the East. 
We behold the strivings of a spirit which had- grown 
fully conscious of the fatal defects of Hellenic civil- 
ization, which sought through the mediation of a 
more spiritual faith to avert the ruin towards which 
classical antiquity was evidently drifting. And yet 
the movement is not altogether revolutionary. Plato 
recognized the really noble elements in Western life, 
and strove to incorporate them into his own system. 
He attempted to weld into one life the practical tem- 
per of the West and the spirituality of the East, — 
to combine the moral and aesthetic vigor of Hellenism 
with the faith and reverence of India. What, we 

44 Republic, v. 459 ; Leges, v. 739 ; vii. 807. Among the lower 
orders, however, individual property was permitted as a concession 
to their degraded natures, over which appetite, not reason, reigns. 
(Republic, iv. 421.) 

45 Michelis (Die Philosophie Platon's, ii. 319) regards the Platonic 
commonwealth as an ecclesiastical rather than a political ideal. 



HELLENIC CIVILIZATION. 69 

are ready to ask, was the result of this effort to recon- 
cile the two conflicting impulses of the human spirit? 

We answer, that Plato, despite the grandeur of 
his genius, failed utterly to accomplish his design. 
His struggle, for the reconciliation of the two conflict- 
ing systems only plunged him into a sea of inconsist- 
encies. The Platonic speculations are inharmonious. 
One dialogue contradicts another: only when they 
are studied apart from each other, is the conflict of 
ideas hidden. At one moment Plato is carried to the 
extremes of Oriental mysticism : he is an ascetic and 
an absolutist. At another moment, the free critical 
spirit of Greece is in the ascendant, and he under- 
mines the foundations of his own faith. Hence that 
inconsistency of which Cicero speaks, 46 — the waver- 
ing in belief, the obscurity which envelops some of 
the most fundamental principles of his philosophy. 

Even the doctrine of ideas — the very groundwork 
of the Platonic system — is sometimes sacrificed. In 
the " Republic," the great reformer, in earnest protest 
against the tendencies of the Hellenic spirit, is paint- 
ing a truly Oriental ideal of life ; and there the theory 
of ideas, as the self-existent and immutable archetypes 
of all phenomena, is unfolded with a lofty eloquence 
and an air of the most assured conviction. 47 But in 

46 De Nat. Deorum, i. 12, " Platonis inconstantia." 

47 Republic, v. 474, seq. In the " Tirnaeus," animated by a similar 
spirit, the idealistic theory is presented with equal assurance. ( Ti- 

maeus, 52.) 



70 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

the Parmenides, the critical and rationalistic spirit 
of Greece predominates ; and now the faith of Plato 
begins to waver. The arguments in favor of idealism 
are rigidly analyzed and shown to be insufficient ; 
weighty objections are raised against the theory and 
left unanswered ; and, finally, no conclusion is reached 
except that, if the existence of the archetypal ideas 
be not taken for granted, there can be no true research 
nor genuine philosophy. 48 Evidently the idealism of 
Plato was not that of the Oriental. To the latter it 
was a matter of firm, unfaltering faith, — a religious 
conviction which controlled every part of his thought 
and life. To Plato, on the contrary, it was merely a 
sublime hypothesis, indispensable as the basis of true - 
philosophy, but beset by unanswerable objections and 
hopeless difficulties. 

The same wavering is evinced in the ethical and 
political parts of the Platonic system. In ethics a 
new ideal of life was proclaimed, but the proclamation 
was neither clear nor consistent. The tone of the 
Protagoras was in marked contrast with that of the 
Gorgias; and, throughout all his speculations, Plato 
hesitates to give a precise and formal statement of 
his ethical theory. In politics he freely confesses that 

48 Parmenides, 134. In the "Sophistes" — the design of which is 
logical rather than metaphysical — the distinction between the tran- 
sient particular and the immutable idea is lost sight of: the idealistic 
theory is virtually abandoned. (Sophistes, 246, 248.) 



HELLENIC CIVILIZATION. 71 

his views are impracticable. The ideal common- 
wealth, where the faith and reverence of the East 
are to be united with the valor, the activity, and man- 
liness of the West, is a dream of what may be in the 
heavens, 49 but which even its projector does not ex- 
pect to realize upon the face of the earth. And thus, 
throughout all his speculations, Plato stands before 
us in a single character. He is a reformer, earnestly 
protesting against the fatal tendencies of Hellenism, 
but powerless to correct them. He is met upon every 
side by difficulties which he can neither surmount 
nor evade. His metaphysical researches end in a 
brilliant hypothesis : his ethical and political studies 
in a dream of the impossible. 

The Platonic philosophy w^as, indeed, a masterpiece 
of human genius. It was a magnificent protest against 
the materialism and wordliness of Grecian life. It 
brought the vague abstractions of Oriental thought 
forward into the clear sunlight of classical art. It 
embodied, in forms of matchless beauty, that senti- 
ment of spirituality, that deep sense of sin, that hope 
in the future, and faith in the Infinite, which Western 
life so strangely lacked. But beyond this it accom- 
plished nothing. Its exotic conceptions took no root 
in the national life, and bore no fruit. Even as philo- 
sophical speculations, they did not flourish in the 
unfriendly climate of Greece. The great master him- 

*9 Republic, ix. 592, A. 



72 THE SECRET OP CHRISTIANITY. 

self, as we have seen, had not always been able to 
hold with firm grasp to his idealistic faith; and his 
disciples were still less capable of resisting the scep- 
tical and materializing influences which pervaded the 
atmosphere of the West. When the spell of Plato's 
genius had somewhat worn away, a great reaction 
ensued ; and for nearly five centuries only an occa- 
sional representative of pure Platonism made his 
appearance in the schools of philosophy. Of this 
triumphant reaction, which put an end to all hope 
that Greece would ever be emancipated from the 
bondage of materialism, Aristotle was the leader. 

Of late years, the Aristotelian system has generally 
been characterized as a development of the Platonic, — 
as one wherein the conceptions of the latter have lost 
something of their rich poetic bloom, but have ripened 
into a more philosophic maturity. 50 The origin of 
this view is easily explained. The Peripatetic philos- 
ophy, like all reactionary movements, was essentially 
modified by the system from which it rebounded. It 
is easy to see that Aristotle was profoundly impressed 
by the broad views and the deep insight into nature 
attained through the idealism of his master. He is 
very willing to admit that thereby a great advance — 
dimly foreshadowed in the Pythagorean speculations 

50 Thurot, Etudes sur Aristote, ix. ; Zeller, Die Philos. der Griechen, 
ii. 10 ; Ueberweg, History of Philosophy, i. 120 ; Prantl, Geschichie der 
Logik, i. 190. 



BBLLKNIC CIVILIZATION. 73 

— had been made beyond Hie bald materialism of the 
Ionic philosophy. 51 And it is his central aim to pre- 
serve these valuable results, while discarding the fun- 
damental tenets of Platonism. He seeks to preserve 
such conceptions as that of universal and necessary 
truths; 52 of immediate and indemonstrable principles 
upon which all demonstration must rest; 53 of the 
pure reason, as a light revealing what had before lain 
in the obscurity of an imperfect consciousness. 54 Of 
such conceptions, it is true, his empiricism can give 
no rational account : they are utterly incongruous 
with the general tenor of his teaching. But still they 
serve to surround the Aristotelian philosophy with a 
sort of idealistic haze ; deceived by which, some of 
our modern critics have indignantly denied that the 
system was an empirical one. 55 But they have mis- 
taken a gloss upon the surface for an underlying and 
essential characteristic. Aristotle at heart is not at 
all in accord with the idealists. He does not grasp 
the chief element of their faith. 

That chief fundamental element of idealism is the 



51 Aristot., Metaph., i. 6 ; Opera, ii. 20; Lipsiae, 1831. 

52 Ibid., xii. 10 ; Opera, ii. 290. I have selected this passage from 
among many, because it shows Aristotle's method of eYading the 
difficulties of his position. 

53 Aristot., Anal. Post., ii. 2, 12; also, i. 9, 1. 

54 De Anima, iii. 5, 2. 

55 Prantl [GeschicUte der Logik, i. 215), for instance, speaks of the 
geschu-atz of those who impute empiricism to Aristotle. 

4 



74 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

belief in the real unity of the universal. To the 
idealist, the sensible particulars grouped in a single 
class are but multiplied shadows of an unseen reality. 
The species, therefore, is something more than a name 
for the aggregate of individuals, — for the collection 
of shadows which alone reveal themselves to sense : 
above and before the phenomenal is the true uni- 
versal, by which the particulars are bound together 
in a real unity. And this establishment of unity, 
where sense reveals only a disorderly aggregation of 
particulars, is the essence of idealistic faith. But 
Plato was not content with this abstract statement. 
He invests these ideas, these universals, with a sort 
of poetic personality. He assigns to them a distinct, 
independent, and even personal existence, apart from 
any relations to the divine mind. 56 But this doctrine 
forms no proper part of the idealistic faith. It was 
simply a poetic embellishment, and one that sadly 
interferes with a clear conception of the system that 
it was designed to embellish. 

What we wish now to note is, that Aristotle's criti- 
cism fails to grasp the chief element of the idealistic 
theory. His arguments do not touch the real points 
at issue : they are directed against the poetic embel- 
lishments of the doctrine, or else totally misconceive 

56 Plotirras, Plutarch, and other ancients understood this to he a 
figure of speech on the part of Plato. (Haureau, Philosophie Scolas- 
tique, i. 49.) 



HELLENIC CIVILIZATION. 75 

its scope. 87 And when he comes to theorize for him- 
self, he is equally far from grasping the secret of 
idealism. His theory of essential forms has been 
regarded by many as a modification of the Platonic 
system ; but, in reality, it is a thoroughly empirical 
conception, devoid of every valuable element which 
characterized the older doctrine. It furnishes no 
ground for that belief in the unity of the universal 
which it is the aim of idealism to enforce. The essen- 
tial form has no existence outside of the particular ; 
the species, therefore, is only a group of things which 

6 7 Aristotle's chief objection was that the ideal theory serves only 
to uselessly multiply existences. [Metaph., xii. 4; i. 7 ; Eth. Nic, i. 
6. 9.) The objection would be well founded against the system as 
Aristotle comprehended it, — a doctrine teaching that the ideas were 
the essential qualities of things torn from the things themselves and 
left to roam about in a supra-sensual realm. But that is the poetry 
of idealism, not its philosophy. The essence of the idealistic faith is, 
that all phenomena gathered in one natural class are the multiplied 
shadows of one reality. And to withdraw the thought from the 
world of sense, to fix it upon the idea, the universal, the law, the 
ideal type which is mirrored in these many shadows, — this certainly 
is not to multiply existences : it is to reduce them to unity. 

The second objection most frequently urged is, that the theory of 
ideas affords no real explanation of the phenomena. (Metaph., 
xii. 5; Opera, ii. 269.) That is plainly the criticism of an empiri- 
cist. Idealism proposes to explain phenomena by reducing them 
to the unity of the universal or law. The law of gravitation, for 
instance, does not reveal any working force or operative agency 
accounting for things in the Aristotelic sense : it simply shows that 
an immense mass of seemingly diverse phenomena may be deduced 
from a single idea or principle. To this extent, idealism explains 
phenomena by reducing them to unity, and farther it does not pre- 
tend to go. 



76 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

happen to resemble each other in certain of their 
qualities. That these resembling qualities are called 
essential ones, amounts to nothing ; for this concep- 
tion of essentiality is one of which Aristotle finds it 
impossible, from his standpoint, to give a satisfactory 
account. 58 In the ultimate analysis, the essential be- 
comes merely the contrary of the accidental ; and the 
accidental is only defined as that which does not hap- 
pen always or ' for the most part.' 59 In all this, we 
are on the highway to the bleakest empiricism. De- 
spite the subtle refinements through which Aristotle 
had attempted to pass beyond the limits of his funda- 
mental theory, he is compelled to return at last to the 
narrow circle of thought by which empirical philos- 
ophy is logically bounded. 

The idealism of Plato and the Oriental, as we have 
seen, led naturally to a profound faith in immortality ; 
and herein also the system of Aristotle reveals itself 
as a reaction. "It is doubtful," says Aristotle, 60 
" whether the dead have any consciousness of the 
good or the evil." Memory and the true personality 
of man perish with the body. 61 The active reason is 
eternal; but the precise relation which this reason 
maintains to the human spirit Aristotle does not de- 

58 Metaph., v. 2; x. 8; iv. 30; Analyt. Post., i. 4, 8. 

59 Metaph., vi. 6. 60 Ethic Nic, i. 11. 5. 
61 De Anima, iii. 5, 4. 



HELLENIC CIVILIZATION. 77 

termine. 82 At the very best, his conception of the 
future life is only a refinement upon the gloomy, dis- 
trustful view of the Homeric poetry ; and it is very 
doubtful whether he had any faith whatsoever in a 
life beyond the grave. 63 And the doctrine of metem- 
psychosis — that conception which Pythagoras, Plato, 
and all the East had so inseparably linked with a 
vivid sense of immortality — Aristotle dismisses with 
a coolness closely akin to contempt. 64 

The ethical system of Aristotle is also directly op- 
posed to that of his master. Its ideal does not consist in 
an ascetic warfare against human nature, but in a pro- 
cess of culture, in the gaining of a mean between 
vicious extremes. In his political philosophy Aristo- 
tle is equally true to the old Hellenic tendencies. He 
has nothing of that deep-rooted contempt for public 
opinion which characterized the transcendentalism of 
Plato ; on the contrary, he is always willing to regard 
the popular voice as the exponent of a true instinct 
with which his own theories must be brought in har- 
mony. 65 He does not believe in the supremacy of a 

62 Kenan (Averroes et I'Averroisme, 122) rightly declares the Aristo- 
telian theory of the Reason contained in the third book of the De 
Anima, to be "un apercu vague, indecis, sans connexion avec le reste 
de la doctrine pe'ripateticienne." 

63 Ravaisson, Me'taphysique d'Aristote, i. 590, note. 

64 De Anima, i. 3, 18. 

65 Grant, Aristotle's Ethics, i. 47. The human spirit, says Aris- 
totle, is naturally fitted for the knowledge of the truth and its rude 
perceptions are generally correct. (Rhet., i. 1; Nic. Eth., x. 2, 4.) 



78 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

spiritual order, 66 in the abrogation of the rights of 
property, 67 in the suppression of intellectual and 
religious freedom, in any part of that Oriental polity 
which Plato wished to introduce in the West. 

The Aristotelian philosophy, then, in its every part 
was a reaction against the spirit and faith of Plato. 
It was a reaction thoroughly and finally triumphant. 
So far as classical antiquity was concerned the ideal- 
istic movement was at an end. The triumph of the 
Stagirite was so complete that no task remained for 
his disciples except to develop the empirical tenden- 
cies of their school and race. 68 The idealism of 
Plato gradually and silently vanishes even from 
among the doctrines of his professed followers. 
Henceforward the Oriental sentiment of dependence 
and sinfulness gains no formal expression, gathers 
around it no body of avowed adherents in classical 
life. It exists only as a vague aspiration, which is 
felt, but not understood; which inspires discontent 
with the popular ideal, but has no power to frame a 
new or better one. 69 The free, proud, self-reliant 

66 Aristotle objects to Plato's system of a supreme speculative 
order that it would establish a state within a state. (Politic, II. 2. 12.) 
In this he anticipates the most fatal objection to the mediaeval hier- 
archy, — a system in which Plato's idea of spiritual supremacy was 
partially realized. 

67 Politic, ii. 1, 2. 

68 Thurot, Etudes sur Aristote, 183, seq. ; Prantl, Geschichte d&r 
Logik, i. 348, 352. 

69 This vague aspiration, or uneasy sentiment of protest against 



HELLENIC CIVILIZATION. 79 

impulse which had ruled Hellenic life from the be- 
ginning pushed constantly on to its final extremes of 
invligion, of sensuality, of utter doubt and despair. 
For centuries its development was unchecked and 
uninterrupted. 

At last, however, there came a period in which 
Orientalism gained a real foothold in the Pagan 
West. It was a period of decay and ruin. It was 
characterized by the extinction of the spirit of liberty, 
by the loss of that aesthetic power which had created 
the poetry and art of ancient Greece, by the gradual 
vanishing of the noblest characteristics of Hellenic 
genius. As the decadence drew near its final stages, 
the counter-impulse of the human spirit began slowly 
to develop itself: the faith of Plato, of Pythagoras, of 
India, once more gains formal expression, and gathers 
around it a numerous body of adherents. Of this 
movement, born of the decay of the classical spirit, 
Alexandria was the undisputed centre. Her magnif- 
icent position, at the very gateway of the East, made 
her the natural focus of the Oriental influences which 
were pouring in upon the West ; and in her schools 
began that vigorous development of idealism which 
culminated in the Neo-Platonic philosophy. 

the prevailing tendencies, is most perfectly embodied in the Stoical 
philosophy. Epicureanism, on the other hand, represents the bold, 
uncompromising development of the Greek impulse, to its final 
results. It is this which forms that dividing line between the two 
philosophies that Zeller finds it so difficult to trace. (Philosophic der 
Griechen, iii. 20, 207, 270.) 



80 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Neo-Platonism, then, arose only upon the ruins of 
Hellenism. It sprang np in a foreign country, among 
Greeks, whose native tendencies of thought had been 
radically modified by surrounding influences. It was 
not the outcome of classical life. Its doctrines had, 
indeed, been filtered through the philosophy of 
Plato ; but they bear no trace of any alliance with 
pure Hellenic thought. 70 The Neo-Platonic system 
was thoroughly Oriental in character if not in 
origin. 71 

How utterly inefficient it was as a reforming in- 
fluence in Pagan life need hardly be told. At the 
very best, Neo-Platonism was an abstruse speculation, 
which did not reach the popular life ; and even among 
its followers it was a dream, a reverie, rather than a 
practical power. The cardinal aim of the Neo-Pla- 
tonist was victory over the senses, — the attainment 
of a state of spiritual exaltation where faith should 
be completely triumphant, where the soul should 
repose in absolute communion with the Infinite. But 

"•° Vacherot (L'Ecole d'Alexandrie, i. 114) truly says: "L'alliance 
de l'Orient et de la Grece est loin d'aboutir a une representation com- 
plete et egale des tendances diverses de l'esprit Grec et de l'esprit 
Oriental . . . c'est seulement l'Orient et Platon." 

71 Lassen (Indische Alterthumskunde, iii. 418, seq.) has carefully 
shown the strict alliance between Neo-Platonic and Oriental philoso- 
phy. Of course we have nothing to do with the historical question 
as to origin. By Orientalism we mean not a system borrowed from 
the East, but one created by the same moral impulse that has always 
ruled Oriental life. 



HELLENIC CIVILIZATION. 81 

this spiritual exaltation even Plotinus cannot conceive 
of as a permanent condition : it is a momentary en- 
thusiasm, a flash of ecstasy from which the soul soon 
relapses into its natural moods. 72 And among those 
who came after him there is manifested a growing 
sense of man's inability to reach these heights of 
spirituality and absolute faith : they fall hopelessly 
back upon the popular faith and its crudest supersti- 
tions as a means of approximating to an unattainable 
ideal ; 73 their lofty spiritualism ends in a lame 
apology for the low materialism of Hellenic religion. 
Thus the Alexandrian movement revolves in one 
narrow circle. No real progress nor reform is made. 
The great current of Pagan life sweeps on in its 
ancient course; and Neo-Platonism forms only an 
eddy in the stream. 

Such, then, is the panorama of Hellenic civilization, 
at least in its broadest outlines. From beginning to 
end, the proud humanistic impulse which created the 
religion, the poetry, the art of Greece, maintains its 
supremac}^ in spite of all opposition, and moves unin- 
terruptedly on to its inevitable end. What that end 
was we have already seen. The- almost entire ex- 
tinction of a religious sentiment which rested upon 
too frail a foundation to resist the assaults of free 
inquiry ; the universal corruption of morals engen- 

W Plotinus, Ennead, vi. 9, 10. 

™ Zeller, Philosophic der Griechen, iii. 694, 951, 957. 
4* F 



82 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

dered by a sensualistic theory and by the lack of 
any firm faith in immortality ; the downfall of those 
free institutions which furnished no permanent basis 
for popular liberty, — these are the three essential 
features which mark the final stages of Hellenic 
development in religious, moral, and political life. 
For these results Hellenism furnished no remedy 
from its own resources, and permitted of none from 
without. The tendency, having once gained control 
of the national life, could not afterwards be checked 
by any power known to ancient civilization. The 
free, proud, self-reliant spirit which animated Hellenic 
life led naturally and inevitably to the political 
slavery, the moral degradation, the doubt and despair, 
that marked the last days of Paganism in the West. 

As we end our study of the two representative 
civilizations of antiquity, let us briefly recapitulate 
the results obtained. 

The civilization of India, as we have seen, has its 
origin in the feeling of dependence and spiritual 
need; that of Greece, in the spirit of pride and self- 
reliance. The one system represents the ascendancy 
of faith: the other represents the supremacy of 
reason. The one system is founded upon the pre- 
cepts of a divine revelation : its rules of morality, its 
laws of government, and the principles of its science, 
are derived from writings supposed to be sacred and 



HELLENIC CIVILIZATION. 83 

infallible. The other has no special revelation, but 
relies only upon the intuitions of the human soul ; 
making the inspiration of the poet, the impulses of 
the conscience, or the voice of the people, its sole 
basis of authority. The one seeks for the divine in 
nature ; the other, in human life. The one worships 
an infinite and absolute entity, devoid of all the 
attributes of existence, and yet comprehending the 
universe within itself : the divinities of the other are 
immortal and invisible men, sharing even the frailties 
and limitations of human nature. The one believes 
that God is infinitely removed from the life of man: 
the other is inspired with a sense of the nearness of 
the divine to the human. The one is idealistic in its 
tone, and animated by a profound faith in spiritual 
realities : the other is materialistic, and looks with 
doubt upon every form of existence which eludes the 
apprehension of the senses. The one seeks for de- 
liverance from the present life, which it regards as 
the prison-house of the soul : the other finds no true 
enjoyment save in earthly existence, and turns with 
invincible dread from the thought of death. The 
one is engrossed with the wildest dreams concerning 
the future : the other has no firm faith in man's im- 
mortality. The one wages an eternal war against 
human nature : the other has for its ethical aim the 
perfect development of every faculty and energy of 
human life. The political idea of the one is the utter 



84 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

repression of individuality by onerous restrictions of 
the law, and the ascendancy of the spiritual power ; 
that of the other is the liberty of the people, and the 
supremacy of the state even in religious affairs. 

It would be useless to attempt to decide upon the 
relative merits of these two representative civiliza- 
tions. They are the developments of the two opposite 
sides of one human nature : each answers to certain 
needs and aspirations of the soul which the other 
entirely ignores. Thus each system possesses ele- 
ments necessary for the perfection of human life ; 
and each, through the one-sidedness of its develop- 
ment, leads to the most ruinous results. If the civil- 
ization of India was more enduring, it was also less 
progressive. It turned man's thoughts away from the 
practical affairs of life into a world of dreamlike rev- 
erie ; it nurtured the most boundless credulity and 
the wildest superstitions ; it inculcated the most 
slavish submission to the authority of the past, thus 
repressing the spirit of free inquiry, and crushing out 
all possibility of improvement. On the other hand, 
if the civilization of Greece was more brilliant in its 
progress, it was far more gloomy in its end. There 
are few sadder pages in human history than those 
which describe the utter loss of all faith in God and 
spiritual things, the weariness of life and dread of 
death, the scepticism and despair, which characterized 
the final periods of classical civilization. 



HELLENIC CIVILIZATION. 85 

Without attempting, then, the impossible task of 
deciding upon the relative merits of the two systems, 
we need only to understand that they are the com- 
plements of each other. All efforts at reform, there- 
fore, whether made in India or in Greece, seek to 
supply the deficiencies of one system by developing 
the counter impulse of the human spirit. Still, they 
have this difference between them : the Indian civili- 
zation, being more decidedly distasteful to the active 
practical spirit of the people, the opposition to it cul- 
minates in the form of a great popular revolt led 
by the military class. On the other hand, Hellenic 
civilization was more congenial to the popular tastes 
and prejudices, therefore the opposition to it comes 
mainly from the more thoughtful classes, and takes 
the form of philosophical protest. The opposition, 
thus differing in its character, differs also in the cause 
of its failure. The Buddhistic revolt failed because 
it was unable to grasp the principles upon which a 
true and permanent reform could be based : the ideal- 
istic protest against Hellenism failed, for the most 
part, because it lacked the means of becoming a prac- 
tical power in the land. For different reasons, both 
the revolt and the protest were equally inefficient. 
Each proved utterly powerless to arrest the fatal 
evolution that was going on in the popular life. 

And in this incapacity lies the secret of the failure 
of ancient civilization. The true ideal of life demands 



86 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

the harmony of these two conflicting forces, each of 
which is so beneficial when regulated and restrained 
by the presence of the other. Real progress consists 
in the constant approximation toward such a harmony 
of opposing tendencies. It struggles to develop both 
impulses of the human spirit, and thus, through the 
interaction of these two forces, to produce a perfect 
civilization able to satisfy the twofold needs of human 
nature. But ancient civilization, whether of the East 
or of the West, was unable to take even the first step 
in such a movement. So far from tending towards 
an harmonious development of the spirit, it entirely 
ignores, or rather crushes out, one of the two factors 
necessary for the formation of a perfect system of life. 
One impulse, having gained the ascendancy, totally 
excludes the other, and thus, without the restraint of 
any counterbalancing power, pushes on with rapid 
strides to the wildest extremes and most fatal ex- 
cesses. The constantly increasing evils of such an 
evolution may produce a feeling of discontent and of 
vague longing for reform, which finds expression in a 
philosophical protest or popular revolt. But these 
efforts always fail to realize their aim. Still, the 
original movement goes steadily on, until it ends in 
the imbecility and unbroken stupor of Oriental life, 
or in that utter disintegration and downfall which 
was the happier fate of Paganism in the West. Such 
results were inevitable ; for both the svstem of the 



HELLENIC CIVILIZATION. 87 

East and that of the West were diseased forms of 
civilization. They had produced a morbid develop- 
ment of one side of human nature, and an incurable 
paralysis of the other. Both rendered entirely impos- 
sible that free harmonious movement of all the forces 
of human life, which constitutes the true ideal of 
civilization. 

Happily for the interests of humanity, the task 
which Paganism proved itself unable to accomplish 
was, after all, not an impossible one. 



88 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

WHAT is the essence of Christianity ? What is 
the source of that power which has made 
Christian civilization so much superior to that of 
Paganism ? These are questions that are universally 
felt to be of supreme importance, and to them many 
answers have been returned. The theology, the ethics, 
the life of Jesus, have all been carefully explored in 
search of the secret of his power. Each new explana- 
tion has been supported by labored arguments that 
seem to satisfy hardly any one but their authors. So 
theory after theory has come and gone. And still we 
seem to have drawn no nearer to the solution of this 
the chief problem of history and of religion. 

Amidst all this painful and fruitless research, our 
own theory will seem one of strange simplicity. The 
essence of Christianity, we say, is faith in Christ. 

Evidently our answer has one immense advantage 
above all others that have been made. It is confirmed 
by the Christian consciousness of all ages and of all 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 89 

parties. Every real Christian will instantly confess 
that the roots of his religion spring, not from any 
ethical precept, however wise, nor from any theolog- 
ical dogma, however true, but from faith in Christ. 
So far there can be no difference of opinion. But is 
this constant element also the distinctive one? Does 
it separate Christianity from all other religions ? Can 
it be made to explain the rise and progress of Chris- 
tian civilization ? In order to answer these questions, 
we must analyze this principle of faith, and see what 
it really contains. 

One factor of this faith is evidently the love of a 
personal ideal, — of the man Jesus. Christianity is 
not content with theological abstractions. It does not 
simply require obedience to certain ethical precepts. 
But it places before the eyes of its followers a perfect 
type of character : its aim is to arouse a feeling of love 
for the personality of Jesus. To imitate, to revere 
with all the enthusiasm of one's nature, this surpassing 
ideal, that is the primal duty of the Christian. 

But this is not all that the Christian principle con- 
tains. Faith in Christ has for its second factor the 
sense of dependence and spiritual need. The Christ 
of Christendom is not simply a Master to be loved 
and revered : he is a Saviour to be leaned upon. His 
followers are to have that profound sense of their own 
weakness and sinfulness, which renders them sensi- 
tive to the purifying and reforming influences that 



90 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

radiate from the personality of Jesus. Without this, 
their love for the ideal would lead to no practical 
results : it would be merely an aesthetic sentiment, 
expending itself in a vague and fruitless admiration. 
But combine the two, and you have the most effec- 
tive reforming influence that the world has ever 
known. You have what the Christian conscious- 
ness of all ages has understood by faith in Christ. 

We wish now to note, that these two factors corre- 
spond to the two forms of ancient civilization. One 
element of the Christian principle embodies the Hel- 
lenic tendency; the other, the Oriental. 

The specific aim of Hellenism, as we have seen, 
was to develop an ethical and aesthetic enthusiasm 
among the people. It inculcated a profound rever- 
ence for the moral institutions of the human spirit : 
it sought to realize a certain ideal of virtuous con- 
duct. Nor was this ideal entirely an abstract one : 
it was embodied, partially at least, in the lives of the 
Homeric heroes and of the Olympian deities. But 
the other factor of Christian faith was almost wholly 
wanting in the Greek religion: there was the moral en- 
thusiasm, but hardly a trace of the sense of spiritual 
need. Hence the Greek, having only the feeblest con- 
sciousness of his own deficiencies, was little disposed 
to admire the virtues which he lacked. The Hellenic 
ideal, therefore, was only the embodiment of the Hel- 
lenic tendencies : it was essentially one-sided and im- 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 91 

perfect; brilliantly portraying certain ethical qualities, 
it ignored others of still nobler significance. When- 
ever it excited any thing beyond a vague and barren 
admiration, it served only to exaggerate the fatal ten- 
dencies of the Grecian spirit, and to hasten forward 
the evolution, already begun, to its inevitable results. 
If we turn now to the other division of Paganism, 
we find a similar correspondence to the second factor 
of Christian faith. Orientalism develops the con- 
sciousness of spiritual need and dependence in its 
most absolute form. So far from teaching men to 
rely upon their own individual efforts, it makes the 
highest aim of life to consist in the complete sur- 
render of all individuality. Reason, conscience, and 
the will are to be one by one abandoned as the soul 
passes into the communion of the Infinite. Some- 
times this spirit formulates itself in terms very sim- 
ilar to those used by Christianity : indeed, when we 
compare the teaching of the Puranic scriptures, con- 
cerning the importance of faith as the chief religious 
duty, 1 with the Vedic doctrine of sacrifice, we seem 
to be witnessing a religious evolution very similar to 
that which took place in the passage from Moses to 
St. Paul. But the identity between Christian and 
Oriental faith is one of terms only, not of meaning. 
One element of the former is entirely wanting : there 
is no presentation of a personal ideal fitted to evoke 

1 Burnouf, Bhagavat-Purana, Preface, cxi. 



92 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

the love and reverence of the worshipper. Faith is 
directed only towards an Abstract Being, or else 
towards those divine incarnations pictured in the 
Hindoo mythology, which, after all, are but illusory 
manifestations of the Infinite. But human love can 
really fasten only upon a concrete and personal object ; 
hence no moral enthusiasm was created by the pres- 
entation of this abstract and shadowy ideal, and the 
faith ends in dreamy meditations or barren ecstasies. 
The religious impulse exhausts itself in the endeavor 
to crush out human individuality instead of seeking 
its perfection and ennoblement. Orientalism, with 
no moral enthusiasm, can exert no reformatory in- 
fluence upon human life. 

All this affords not the least countenance to the 
theory, so often presented, that Christianity consists 
merely in a happy combination of Grecian and Ori- 
ental doctrines. This synthesis cannot be proved as 
a matter of fact; and, secondly, it is very absurd to 
suppose that a mere combination of doctrines, how- 
ever ingenious, could exert so vast an influence over 
the practical life of mankind, inasmuch as such eclec- 
ticism has always proved entirely barren, even in the 
domain of speculative thought. The results of our 
analysis point to altogether a different conclusion. 
Christianity is not a mere eclecticism, — an ingenious 
patch-work of ideas gathered from different sources : 
it is the fusion of the two great moral forces of life 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 93 

into one spirit. Christian faith welds together the 
ethical enthusiasm fostered by the Greek religion, 
and the sense of spiritual need which Orientalism 
inspires. 

Before completing this study of Christianity, it is 
necessary to consider the character of its doctrines. 
For dogma, although of secondary importance, is not 
without its influence : especially may it have a sort 
of reflex action upon the moral life from which it has 
sprung. For instance, if a doctrine supposed to be 
divinely revealed, should afterwards prove revolting 
to a more highly developed ethical sense, it must evi- 
dently react very injuriously upon the moral life of 
the believer. The dogmas of a perfect religion must, 
therefore, be of such a character, that under no cir- 
cumstances will they tend to check or repress the 
ethical development of mankind: they must simply 
formulate certain universal convictions which human 
thought, in any stage of its progress, can neither out- 
grow nor abandon. With this condition Christianity 
invariably complies. Its doctrines, as delivered by its 
Founder, are carried out to no injurious extreme, and 
can never come in conflict with any true ethical im- 
pulse. They are the simplest and purest expressions 
of certain fundamental convictions which had never 
been entirely wanting to the human heart, although 
they had been universally obscured by the influence 
of speculative extravagance or of moral aberrations. 



94 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Thus, the theology of Christ has for its basis the 
doctrine of the Divine Paternity. Beyond a doubt, 
we have in that conception the simplest and purest 
expression of the universal belief in God, relieved 
from all those exaggerations into which the different 
forms of Paganism had severally run. The Greek, 
upon the one hand, through his enthusiastic belief in 
a personal Divinity, holding the most intimate rela- 
tions with human life, had been led into the extrava- 
gance of Hellenic polytheism. In order to retain the 
idea of a personal will, superintending the affairs of 
earth, he abandoned the conception of the Infinite ; 
Jupiter, " father of gods and men," is yet a finite and 
peccable being. On the other hand, the Hindoo faith 
in the Absolute was exaggerated into a denial of the 
personality of God : the Universal Soul of Indian the- 
ology is an Infinite Abstraction, devoid of will, lack- 
ing all personal attributes, and entirely removed from 
any sympathy with human interests. Both of these 
fatal exaggerations the doctrine of the Divine Pater- 
nity avoids. It is the universal belief in God freed 
from every thing of local or special origin. It is the 
dogma of a universal religion, — a conception equally 
fitted to evoke the reverence of the child or of the 
man, one equally adapted to the needs of the East 
and the West. 

The same character belongs to the ethical doctrines 
of Christianity. The morality of the Gospels is equally 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 95 

freed from the extravagances of the ascetic ideal of 
the East and of the heroic ideal of the West: it has 
no taint of national or of individual peculiarities ; it 
lifts no oue virtue into prominence at the expense of 
another; it elevates no temporary precept, useful only 
for a particular age, into the rank of an eternal prin- 
ciple ; in a word, it is exempt from all those exaggera- 
tions towards which humanity has tended at different 
periods, and which have crippled the moral codes of 
other religions. 

Take, again, the doctrine of the future life taught 
by Jesus. We find it marked neither by the vague- 
ness of Hellenic doubt nor by the wild superstitions 
of Oriental credulity. It is encumbered by none of 
those fanciful inventions concerning the unknown 
world which have been in vogue in almost every age, 
even of Christian history. It simply places in the 
purest and most transparent light that assurance of 
immortality which has been felt by all, and which not 
even the worst extremes of materialism and worldli- 
ness can wholly eradicate from the human heart. 

Such, then, are the primitive and original doctrines 
of Christianity. They are marked, as we have seen, 
by no absolute originality of ideas, but by a singulai 
freedom from the ordinary exaggerations and one- 
sidedness of religious teaching. They place in the 
clearest light those fundamental convictions which 
are more or less obscurely present in the life of all 



96 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

mankind. Their peculiarity therefore is, for the most 
part, of a negative kind : their distinctive feature is 
that they do not interfere, by any reflex action, with 
the advance of human civilization, as did the more 
complex and impure formulas of other religions. But 
the positive element in Christianity — the essential 
principle which distinguishes it from all other re- 
ligious systems — is faith in Christ. This element we 
have found to be compounded of two factors, — the 
love of a -personal ideal, and the sense of need, — 
which, though separated by our analysis, are truly 
effective only when combined into one spiritual im- 
pulse. The synthesis of these two forces constitutes 
the essence of Christianity, and the source of its 
peculiar influence upon the life of mankind. 

Such, then, is the Christian religion. What, we 
are now ready to ask, is the law of its operation upon 
human life ? 

The law of Paganism, as we have already seen, 
was that of development. When a certain tendency 
had once gained control of the national life, every 
thing conspired to develop that tendency to its most 
ruinous extremes. The religion, instead of offering 
any check to this evolution, is a part of the move- 
ment, and is itself swept on to the same inevitable 
end. But the law of Christianity, on the contrary, 
is that of antagonism. Its aim, either in dealing with 



THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 97 

the individual or the nation, is to convert, to regener- 
ate. It finds one tendency of the human spirit 
carried to fatal extremes, and forthwith it begins to 
oppose that tendency. It arouses the counter-im- 
pulse : it strives to develop that side of the human 
spirit which had been stunted and paralyzed by this 
abnormal development of the other. Upon the life 
of the East it brings to bear the spirit of the West : 
upon the life of the West it brings to bear the spirit 
of the East. In a word, it arrays itself in constant 
antagonism to the special tendency that controls the 
life of its worshippers. 

In order to preserve this attitude of constant an- 
tagonism, Christianity should have a great power of 
variation ; and that it undoubtedly has. It is not 
confined to any one type of thought or life. It is 
bound by no doctrinal formulas except those pure 
expressions of universal conviction already described. 
In its essence it is a combination of two factors, 
which severally represent the opposite sides of the 
human spirit; and either of which maybe brought 
into special prominence when circumstances require. 
Is Christianity called upon to deal with a life like 
that of ancient Greece ? Then the sense of need is 
brought into prominence, and a truly Oriental religion 
is gradually formed. Is it called upon to deal with a 
people submissive, priest-ridden, plunged into super- 
stition and intellectual slavery ? Then the sense of 

5 G 



b>5 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

need is comparatively ignored, and the other factor of 
Christian faith comes into the foreground. A strong 
ethical enthusiasm is evoked, and Christianity grad- 
ually takes on the free humanistic form which charac- 
terized the religion of Greece. Thus the Christian 
faith may sweep around from one pole of develop- 
ment to the other ; but through all these changes it 
remains true to its fundamental law. 

That law, as we have seen, is a very simple one. 
It is, that Christianity, alone among all religions, 
maintains a constant antagonism to the special tendency 
which controls the nature of its followers. Let us see 
now whether this simple law is really able to account 
for the varied and intricate phenomena of modern 
civilization. 



THE CATHOLIC AGE. 99 



CHAPTER IV. 



THE CATHOLIC AGE. 



IN our survey of Christian civilization we pass 
over what may be called the period of formation, 
when the new system was rising out of chaos and 
preparing for its work. This omission is not made, 
however, because our law is unable to deal with the 
facts there presented. On the contrary, the chief 
enigmas of this period, — the decadence of Asiatic 
Christianity, the surrender of so large a part of 
Christendom to Mahometanism, the swift rise and 
equally swift decline of Arabian civilization, — all are 
clearly explained in the light of our theory. But we 
cannot here dwell upon these questions, important and 
interesting as they are. We begin with the period 
when the new religion had become thoroughly organ- 
ized, and was ready to enter upon its work of civiliza- 
tion. 

What, we have first to ask, was the nature of the 
popular life upon which Christianity had now to act? 
To which of the two opposite types of development 
did it belong- ? 



100 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Our answer is that all the great political and social 
revolutions which had taken place throughout the 
West had wrought no radical change in the popular 
spirit. The rude Northern nations seem to have but 
little outward resemblance to the people of ancient 
Greece or Rome ; but, at heart, they are really one. 
In both cases there was the same controlling tendency, 
the same prevailing type of life. The only difference 
was a difference in the degree of development. In 
classical antiquity, the Occidental impulse had reached 
the final stages of its evolution. Among the Ger- 
manic tribes it was still in the germ, but only needed 
like opportunities in order to reproduce the life of 
Greece or of Rome. It is this identity of spirit 
between the old and the new population of Europe 
which we seek to show. 

First of all it is to be noted that the religion of the 
Northmen was essentially that of the ancient Greek. 
The conceptions of both are clearly humanistic. The 
Germanic divinities, like the Homeric ones, are some- 
thing more than vague personifications of natural 
forces. They are a race of celestial heroes, clothed 
with the virtues, the vices, and all the attributes of 
human personality. They have human forms, needs, 
and passions. They eat, they drink, they sleep like 
men. 1 They possess no omnipresent activity ; but 
clothed in their magic mantles they render themselves 

1 W. Miiller, System der Altdeutschen Religion, 450. 



THE CATHOLIC AGE. 101 

invisible, and fly from place to place with the speed 
of the wind. The reverence of the Northern nations, 
like that of the Greek, fastened not upon the abso- 
lute, but upon an ideal of human power and beauty. 2 
Their religion was the consecration of humanity, and 
not the worship of nature. 

Classical and Germanic religion also correspond in 
their lack of the sacerdotal spirit. Among the Ger- 
mans the spiritual power, so far from gaining that 
ascendancy which it seems to have reached in the 
earliest ages of Indian history, has no distinct exist- 
ence : it is entirely merged in the secular authority. 3 
"They have no Druids," says Caesar; 4 " nor are 
they zealous in sacrifice." And when we consider 
that the Druidical religion was a pure nature-wor- 
ship, that the Druids were true priests, — forming a 
spiritual hierarchy with duties and prerogatives very 
different from those of the secular officials who per- 
formed religious functions at Rome, — the assertion of 
Caesar is seen to be much more truthful than his 
German critics are willing to allow. 5 There was no 
sacerdotal order, in the proper sense of the term, 
among the Germanic tribes. The religious rites 
which pertained to private life were performed by 

2 Ozanam, Les Germains avant le Christianisme, 73. 

8 Meyer, Judiciaires Institutions, i. 37. 

* De Bello Gallico, vi. 21. 

5 For instance, Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, 58. 



102 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

the heads of families ; 6 only those which concerned 
the public were consigned into the hands of an 
official, who was more a magistrate than a priest. 7 

With these decisive tests — the theological and the 
sacerdotal — all other indications coincide. 8 The 
religion of the Northern nations was eminently prac- 
tical : its aim was to develop a love of virtue or of 
valor ; it created no sense of spiritual need like that 
which gave so intensely sacrificial a character to 
Hindoo faith even in the earliest Vedic periods. 
Like the religions of Greece and Rome, it had a 
vague idea of an impersonal and mysterious fate, — 
the relic of a primitive nature-worship ; like them, 
it had supplemented this by the conception of special 
deities, personally superintending the lives of par- 
ticular individuals, 9 — the polytheistic form of faith 
in Divine Providence. There is also the same radical 
affinity between the doctrines of a future life taught 
by the two forms of Paganism. Death to the bar- 
barian had nothing of the Oriental aspect of deliver- 
ance : to him, as to the Greek, the future life was 
but a shadowy, gloomy, and even repulsive copy 
of the present. 10 In a word, the classical and Ger- 

6 Tacitus, De Germania, ch. x. 

7 At least he has a monopoly of judicial punishments, although 
not of religious rites. {Ibid., vii.) 

8 Ozanam, Les Germains avant le Christianisme, 358. 

9 Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, 503. 

10 Miiller, Altdeutsch. Religion, 409. 



THE CATHOLIC AGE. 103 

manic religions were, throughout, essentially the 
same. 11 

In comparing the social life of the Germanic races 
with that of the Greek, one must guard against lay- 
ing too much stress upon merely superficial resem- 
blances. There is a spirit of wild independence 
which characterizes all savage nations : it is exhibited 
in the earliest periods of Hindoo history as well as 
in Homeric times. The real test of the controlling 
tendency is the method by which a particular race 
attempts to restrain this native wildness and license 
of savage life. In India such restraint was gained 
by the agency of a supposed infallible revelation, by 
the establishment of sacerdotal ascendancy and of 
secular despotism. In Greece, upon the contrary, 
the will of the people was the only normal authority 
and the sole basis of political organization. And, in 
this respect, Germanic society was in harmony with 
that of Greece. The assembly of freemen was the 
sole source of political authority. 12 The king was 
not a civil ruler : he was merely the commander-in- 
chief of the army. 13 The chiefs had no special pre- 
ponderance in legislative or judicial affairs : 14 they 
simply enjoyed that personal distinction which even 

11 Concerning Gaul, consult L. A. Martin, Histoire Morale de la 
Gaule, 148. 

12 Savigny, Gesckichte des Romischen Eechts, i. 187. 

13 Laboulaye, Du Droit de Propri€t€ Fonci€re en Occident, 315. 

14 Savigny, Gesch. d. Rom. Rechts, i. 189. 



104 THE SECEET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

modern society is apt to accord to military leaders. 
The popular assembly was not only the legislature : 
it was the sole court of justice, combining within 
itself the functions both of judge and jury. 15 The 
chief was its presiding officer ; but he had no right to 
direct or alter its decisions : 16 he was simply empow- 
ered to carry them into execution. In a word, Ger- 
manic sovereignty everywhere rests upon the popular 
will : it was founded upon no divine right nor au- 
thority external to the people. And in that we have 
the ultimate political test of the ruling tendency in 
Germanic life. 

Classical life, then, differs from that of the North- 
ern nations, only in the degree of its development. 
The invasion of the Barbarians, while it had over- 
turned the ancient civilization, had effected no radical 
change in the nature of the people. Christianity had 
presented before it the same spirit to regenerate, the 
same tendencies to counteract, as when it first began 
its mission. The field had changed somewhat, but 
not the nature of the work to be performed. 

We turn now to contemplate the Catholic system 
of faith, — the religious power which was to act upon 
this rude, disorganized, and yet essentially homoge- 
neous life of Western Europe. 

Take, first of all, the Catholic theology. And 

15 Savigny, Gesch. d. Rom. Rechts, i. 257. 

16 Baluze, i. 509, cf. Laboulaye. 



THE CATHOLIC AGE. 105 

here let it be remembered that we have nothing to 
do with merely doctrinal discussions: we do not pre- 
tend to decide whether the creed of Athanasius 
approaches nearer to absolute truth than that of 
Alius or Sabellius. All dogma is more or less imper- 
fect, and is only valuable, for our present purpose, 
as an index to the peculiar moral tendency from 
which it has sprung. Regarded from this point of 
view, the Catholic theology is clearly seen to be of a 
purely Oriental type. It had its origin in a most 
profound sense of spiritual need. Under its influence 
the conception of an ideal humanity was more and 
more completely pushed into the background, — was 
always over-shadowed by the thought of an Absolute 
Being wrapped, for a moment, in the human form. 
The Athanasian formula presupposes that the idea 
of personality should not be very strictly defined or 
closely insisted upon. And, incredible as the dogma 
may seem to the free critical spirit which rules Hel- 
lenic or modern life, it contains no difficulty which 
is not again and again presented in the most familiar 
and favorite speculations of Indian theology. 

It is the same with the Catholic theory of human 
nature. The Western church fiercely denounced the 
Pelagian doctrine, which is a perfect embodiment 
of the Hellenic impulse, proud, self-reliant, ethical 
rather than spiritual. 17 It closely followed the lead 

W Pressense, Le Christianisme au Quat. Steele, 326. 
5* 



106 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

of St. Augustine, who, according to his own testi- 
mony, approached Christian theology through the 
portals of Pythagorean 18 and Neo-Platonic 19 Oriental- 
ism. It emphatically proclaimed the insufficiency 
of ethical enthusiasm, the entire dependence of man 
upon an external and divine influence supposed to 
reside in certain sacerdotal institutions. Out of this 
eclipse of human individuality came, likewise, the 
Catholic theory of the church. The individual, stand- 
ing by himself, is lost ; he is saved only by being 
absorbed into that divine communion of which the 
church is the representative on earth. The entire 
surrender of individuality in religious affairs is the 
sole pathway of salvation. In a word, the Catholic 
system is everywhere founded upon the principle of 
dependence ; and all its minor doctrines are logical 
deductions from this, its central idea. 

In the ethical system of Catholicism, the Oriental 
tendency is equally in the ascendant. Its fundamen- 
tal doctrine is that of obedience. It seeks to crush 
out those free impulses of the human nature which 
lead men to assert their independence and to abhor 
restraint ; it teaches that submissiveness and rever- 
ence for authority constitute the highest ideal of 
human character. With this doctrine of obedience, 

18 Retractationes, i. 11. 

19 Confessiones, vii. 13. St. Augustine, in speaking of Platonists, 
has always reference to Neo-Platonists. (De Civitate Dei, viii. 4, 5.) 



THE CATHOLIC AGE. 107 

is conjoined the theory of sacrifice. The natural 
impulses of life are to be crushed ; earthly affections 
are to be replaced by the devotions and ecstasies of 
the saint ; human nature is to be sacrificed rather 
than developed. The type of character which was 
produced through these teachings is familiar to all. 
Its animating spirit was the sense of sin ; its ideal 
was the saint, self-distrustful and downcast ; its car- 
dinal virtues were humility, resignation, and submis- 
siveness ; it gloried in pain, in poverty, and in sacrifice 
of every kind. Upon that saintly ideal of life the 
thought of Catholic Europe was fixed for centuries ; 
and in this way the spirit of the Orient was brought 
to bear upon the proud, restless temper of the West. 

In intellectual life the central principle of Catho- 
licism is the subordination of faith to reason. It 
demands the surrender of the right of private judg- 
ment, and seeks for the final standard of truth in the 
pages of an infallible revelation or in the judgments 
of an infallible church. 20 Thus the intellectual life 
of India was reproduced in mediaeval Christendom. 
In both the spirit of free inquiry is entirely repressed ; 
the principles even of science and philosophy are 
gathered out of certain sacred texts ; the province 
of reason is simply to comment upon these deliver- 
ances of faith. 

Of similar import is the Catholic estimate of the 

20 Cone. Trident. Decreta, in Mohler's Symbolik. 



108 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

value of truth. We have seen that the Brahminical 
philosophy, even in its most heretical moods, looked 
upon truth not as an end in itself, but as a means of 
deliverance. The Catholic theory is precisely simi- 
lar. It teaches that a correct belief is the prerequi- 
site of salvation ; that heresy, however honest, is an 
unpardonable crime. Thus men were led to seek the 
truth only through a slavish sentiment of hope or fear, 
and to frown upon all free inquiry as dangerous to 
the eternal interests of the soul. The .results were 
inevitable. Wherever the truth is valued only for 
its uses, falsehood ceases to be a sin when it subserves 
some pious purpose. Lack of veracity has, therefore, 
always been the peculiar vice of the Hindoo people : 
it was also the besetting sin of the Christian fathers. 21 
The vice grew with every advance of the Catholic 
system ; and we may safely say that indifference to 
the truth was the normal condition of the mediaeval 
intellect. 22 

We have seen how entirely alien asceticism was 
from the materialistic temper of classical antiquity, 
and how natural it was to that Oriental idealism 
which saw in the phenomenal world the dim fleeting 
shadow of unseen glories. Mediaeval Christianity was 
inflamed with the same idealistic conceptions. It also 

21 Middleton, Works, i. 169 (1755) ; Ribof, Dt Oeconom. Patrum in 
Coleridge's Works, ii. 44. Newman, in his labored defence of the 
Fathers, really admits all. (Apologia pro Vita Sua, App. 77.) 

22 Jager, Der Kampf Cajetan's ; Zeitsch. Hist. Theologie, xxiii. 449. 



mi-: catholic ace. 10!) 

nourished a profound contempt for earthly life, 23 and 

a passionate longing for deliverance from its thral- 
dom. By retirement from the world, and through 
self-inflicted tortures, it sought to eradicate every 
natural impulse, and to produce that condition of 
death in life which was regarded as the passport to 
eternal bliss. 

Monasticism is simply the practical organization of 
the ascetic theory. It was an institution widely prev- 
alent among the Buddhists, 24 and it very naturally 
played a very important part in the Orientalized reli- 
gion of Western Europe. Among the Christians of 
Egypt and Asia Minor the monastic tendency was an 
abnormal and pernicious one. It- was a fatal epidemic, 
developing into wild excesses and exaggerations, 25 of 
which even its admirers could make only the lamest 
defence. 26 It everywhere encountered the most bitter 
opposition, 27 and in the end contributed more than 
any other one cause to the overthrow of Chris- 
tianity in the East. 28 In Western Europe, on the 
other hand, it was a normal outgrowth of that special 
phase of Christianity which the needs of the popular 

23 Innocent iii., De Contemptu Mundi, i. 1 ; Opera, iv. 701. 

24 Hardy (Eastern Monachism, 852) has some just remarks con- 
cerning the possible connection, through Pantaenus, of Buddhistic 
and Alexandrian asceticism. 

25 Mohler, Geschkhte des Mdnchthums ; Gesammelte Schriften, ii. 199. 

26 Theodoret, TheophiL, ch. xxvi; in Mohler's Schrifcen, ii. 223. 
2 ? Montalembert, The Monks of the West, i. 356. 

28 Ibid., i. 377. 



110 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

life demanded. It is a notable fact that, when Atha- 
nasius fled to his rightful shelter at Rome, he brought 
with him the monastic institutions. 29 Ever afterwards 
they remained an inseparable and universally accepted 
part of the Catholic system. In that congenial soil, 
they grew up into a healthy and vigorous life, were 
pruned of their worst excesses, were wisely organized 
into system, and became one of the grandest and most 
effective forces in mediaeval civilization. Monasticism 
was a normal element of Christianity in the West, 
but a disease in the East. The contrast is a sug- 
gestive one. It clearly shows that an institution, 
according as the law of antagonism is obeyed or 
broken, becomes a blessing or a curse. 

Still another mark of the close relationship of 
Catholicism with the Oriental spirit, is its constantly 
increasing engrossment with the affairs of the future. 
When the conception of futurity rests upon no firm 
faith in spiritual things, — when it is founded chiefly 
upon the belief that rewards and punishments are 
unequally distributed in this world, so that the future 
life is regarded only as a complementary existence to 
the present, — then the sense of immortality is a con- 
stantly waning one. The belief is merely a logical 
conclusion which falters before the assaults of scep- 
ticism and every advance of the materialistic spirit. 
It was so in classical life ; it was so with the Northern 

29 Mohler, Schriften, ii. 190 ; i. 228. 



THE CATHOLIC AGE. Ill 

nations, among whom doubt concerning the future 
life had been widely prevalent before their conversion 
to Christianity. On the other hand, the Hindoo, even 
when most sceptical, never lost his faith in immor- 
tality. Kapila and Sakvamuni, the leaders of Indian 
scepticism, were even more deeply engrossed with the 
affairs of futurity than the orthodox party. And so 
during the Catholic period the sense of immortality, 
resting upon a profoundly spiritual faith, was con- 
stantly increasing in strength. In the middle ages 
the universal engrossment with the affairs of the 
future life had risen almost to frenzy. It was the 
chief inspiration of the poet and the artist ; it fasci- 
nated every heart with its strange enchantment ; it 
threatened to paralyze the energies of Christendom, 
and to turn all European life into one long dream of 
eternity. 31 

The polity of Catholicism has for its cardinal prin- 
ciple the supremacy of the spiritual power. Classical 
religion, resting upon the sense of the nearness of the 
divine to the human, required no mediatorial agency 
between God and man : it tended, consequently, to 
degrade the sacerdotal order, to regard the priests 
merely as officials employed by the state to perform 
certain public rites of religion. On the other hand, 
Oriental faith, founded upon the idea of the remote- 
ness of the divine from the human, tends to aggran- 

31 Alger, Doctrine of a Future Life, 416. 



112 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

dize the priesthood. The priests were regarded as 
the representatives of God, in a sense altogether un- 
known to classical thought: to them was transferred 
the authority which the Greek believed to reside in 
the people. It need hardly be told how imperiously 
this Oriental impulse dominated through the entire 
course of Catholic civilization. By the establishment 
of clerical celibacy, by the institution of the sacra- 
ments, with their miraculous powers, by every possible 
device, the church strove to give its priesthood inde- 
pendence, dignity, and power. In the course of time 
the Catholic hierarchy came to hold complete ascen- 
dancy in the moral and intellectual life of Western 
Europe. The priest, no more a subordinate func- 
tionary of the State, was the servant of God and the 
spiritual ruler of the people. 

The Catholic system, then, is throughout thor- 
oughly Oriental in tone and tendency. At the same 
time, the religion could not but be insensibly influ- 
enced and modified by the reflex action of that popular 
nature which it was seeking to transform. In this 
way Catholicism was saved from some of the worst 
exaggerations into which Asiatic faith had fallen. 
Take the doctrine of fatalism, for instance. Its germs 
are, beyond a doubt, enfolded in the mediaeval theory 
of human nature ; but they are not developed. The 
practical temper of the West preserved Catholic 
Christianity from this extreme : indeed, there is even 



THE CATHOLIC AGE. 113 

a subtle vein of Pelagianism running through the 
thought of its most determined and orthodox oppo- 
nents. 1 - This modifying power of the popular spirit 
is also displayed in the history of monasticism. The 
monks of Catholic Europe, unlike the devotees of 
India, were not doomed to a life of inaction : they 
were compelled to devote a part of their time to agri- 
culture and kindred employments. Instead of passing 
their lives in idleness and enervating reveries, they 
set the example of useful labor to the warlike popula- 
tions around them, and thus became the first apostles 
of modern industry. 33 

The extreme tendencies of the Catholic system were 
in this way happily modified, but its normal develop- 
ment went on uninterruptedly. Thereby was estab- 
lished that antagonism between religion and the 
popular nature which was so clearly apparent at the 
beginning of the middle ages. On the one side was 
a people proud, independent, full of moral vigor, but 
lacking all spiritual perceptions, — a popular nature 
enclosing within itself the germs of those fatal influ- 
ences which had overwhelmed the civilization of clas- 
sical antiquity. On the other side was a religion, 
founded upon the sense of sin and the contempt of 
life, proclaiming the degradation of man, the suprem- 

32 Wiggers (Schicksale der August, Anthropologic ; Zeitsch., fur Hist. 
Theologie), xxiv. 3, as to Gregory, &c. ; xxvii. 231, as to Beda. 

33 Montalenibert, The Monks of the West, ii. 374 ; v. 161. 



114 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

acy of faith, the obligation of obedience : in a word, 
striving to implant a truly Oriental spirit in the hearts 
of its followers. Thus the two great moral forces 
were both brought into play. Catholic civilization, as 
we hope to show, has sprung from the interaction of 
these forces. It was the product of an Oriental form 
of faith working upon the free, proud, self-reliant 
spirit of Western life. 

We begin our study of Catholic civilization with a 
survey of its social development. And here almost 
every thing that is peculiar and notable is summed up 
in the one word feudalis?n. 

In spite of all the learning and labor that has been 
expended upon this subject, the feudal system still 
seems to be surrounded with deep mystery. Histo- 
rians have minutely described the feudal tenures and 
institutions ; theorists have discovered analogies — 
more or less fanciful — between this and other social 
systems : but, after all, the main difficulty has been 
hardly touched. The feudal sj^stem, it must be con- 
fessed by all, was something unique : as a whole, it 
was without precedent, pattern, or parallel in Euro- 
pean life. Its fundamental principles were directly 
opposed to those of classical or Germanic society. 
And yet this strange system, of unknown origin, sud- 
denly uprose in every part of Western Europe : all 
races and lands seemed compelled to accept it by some 



THE CATHOLIC AGE. 115 

bidden but imperative necessity. "What, one is led to 
ask. was the cause of this development, so unexpected 
and yet so universal? How came the seething life of 
the dark ages to suddenly crystallize into this new 
and strange formation ? It is this ^ the chief problem 
of mediaeval society — that we believe ourselves com- 
petent to solve. 34 

In such a search there is but one scientific method 
of procedure. The essential and distinctive elements 
of the feudal system must first be determined by 
comparing it with the prior forms of European society : 
after that the source of these new elements must be 
discovered ; and then we shall understand the origin 
of all that was peculiar and characteristic in feud- 
alism. 

At the beginning of the feudal era, classical civili- 
zation had almost completely vanished. Germanic 
habits, ideas, and institutions, were everywhere in 
the ascendant. Certain relics of the old regime — 
especially the idea of the imperial power — still exer- 
cised a marked influence upon European thought; 
but they did not radically interfere with the homo- 
geneous condition of affairs. Europe, under the in- 
fluence of the invasion, was virtually returning to 
that social state which is exhibited both in the life of 
Homeric times and in that of the Germanic tribes. 

34 Remusat ( Vie de St. Anselme, 465) has presented this chief prob- 
lem of feudalism, but without attempting to solve it. 



116 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

The dismemberment of the Roman empire, the par- 
celling out of its territory into a vast number of petty 
principalities, the establishment over each of a mili- 
tary ruler or chieftain, with a retinue of dependents 
beneath him, and a certain vague shadow of royalty 
above him, — all this happened as the natural result 
of the conquest, and without the intervention of 
Christian influences. 

Looking more closely at this chaotic society, we 
shall find that the primitive basis of authority was 
everywhere a personal one. The conquerors were 
divided into bands of warriors who, of their own free 
choice, had gathered around the standard of some 
favorite chieftain : they were attached solely to the 
persons of their leaders by the ordinary obligations 
of military fidelity. In a word, the condition . of 
Europe at the dawn of feudalism was one of uni- 
versal disorganization : the only efficient bond of 
union was the sentiment of honor and military fidelity 
by which the barbarians were attached to the persons 
of their leaders. 

What, now, were the elements through which this 
barbaric chaos was transformed into the system of 
feudalism ? 

The first great change was in the basis of authority. 
In the feudal epoch, it was no longer personal, but 
territorial. Sovereignty did not depend, as in pre- 
vious epochs, upon distinguished birth or personal 



THE CATHOLIC AGE. 117 

merit, but upon the ownership of the land. The 
possessor of a fief, great or small, was sovereign within 
his own domain. There seemed to be a certain mystic 
virtue in the soil, which conferred upon its owner the 
most absolute rights. He alone made laws, adminis- 
tered justice, collected taxes, coined money, and per- 
formed all other acts of sovereignty within his own 
possessions. Superior force might, and did very often, 
interfere with this exclusive jurisdiction. But what- 
ever usurpation might accomplish, the theory of feudal 
life remains incontestable. The landed proprietor was 
a sovereign : those who possessed no land were sub- 
jects. In this entire reversal of the Roman and Ger- 
manic rule, in this transformation of personal into 
territorial relations, this making the land the source 
of honor and power, we behold the first element of 
feudalism. 35 

The second characteristic relates to the peculiar 
nature of feudal tenures. In all previous stages of 
Occidental life, the landed proprietor had vested in 
himself an entire and absolute ownership. He was 
under no obligations, save those of the ordinary citi- 
zen ; he could alienate his estate, sometimes with- 
out, 36 and always with, the consent of his heir: he 
could, in a word, exercise every natural right of prop- 
erty, under no restrictions save what the public neces- 

26 Laboulaye, Du Droit de Propriety fonciere, 258. 

36 Eichhorn, Deutsche Staats und Rechtgeschichte, i. 320. 



118 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

sities demanded. But all this was changed in feudal 
life. The proprietor had lost the absolute ownership 
of his domain : he held it from some superior lord, 
upon whom it had been, in turn, conferred by a still 
higher authority. Thus the right of property became 
divided and indefinite : it retreats from vassal to 
suzerain through an ascending line of feoffors, and 
rests nowhere in entirety. By a strange anomaly, 
the lord of the fief, while he was an absolute sover- 
eign within his own domains, did not possess the 
simplest proprietary rights. He holds his lands not 
in fee-simple, but only upon condition of rendering 
certain services in recompense. He cannot even 
alienate them without the consent of the superior 
lord. Indeed, strictly by the theory of feudal law, 
the title does not even pass by inheritance ; for the 
heir comes into possession only after investiture by 
the hand of the suzerain. In this way a strange 
revolution was effected in the tenures of landed prop- 
erty in Europe. That sentiment, so natural to the 
proud Western spirit, which leads men to fiercely 
assert full control and absolute ownership of their 
property, had in some manner been strangely weak- 
ened. For centuries the holders of allodial estates 
had been slowly surrendering their absolute proprie- 
torship in exchange for this imperfect and degenerate 
property in fief. By the end of the tenth century 
the revolution had been fully accomplished, and land 



THE CATHOLIC AGE. 119 

throughout Catholic Europe was almost universally 
held by the feudal tenure. 

These two features, then, — the transition from a 
personal to a territorial basis of social organization, 
and the degeneracy in landed tenures, — are the two 
distinctive elements of feudalism. Co-ordinated with 
the natural results of a barbarian invasion and the 
disintegration of a civilized society, they will explain 
the entire structure of the feudal system. It only 
remains now to seek the origin of these elements. 

We might readily conclude, a priori, that the tran- 
sition from a personal to a territorial basis of social 
organization was a natural product of the Oriental 
spirit ; and the facts of history amply confirm the 
inference. The Roman law recognized no greater 
dignity in immovable or real property than in mov- 
able or personal. The land-owner had no special pre- 
eminence over any other citizen. Especially was this 
the case in political administration. In classical life 
the country possessed no political power nor impor- 
tance. The city was the state, and the country was 
merely an outlying possession of the sovereignty resi- 
dent within the city walls. Government was every- 
where m unicipal in its character ; nations were nothing 
more than aggregations of cities : in a word, the po- 
litical organization of classical life was exactly the 
reverse of that which prevailed in feudal ages. 

If we turn now to the Oriental polity, we find 



120 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

nothing of this municipal character. In India the 
unit of social organization has always been the vil- 
lage community, — a little gathering of landlords 
owning the territory about them. 87 Amid all changes 
of government, the political unit has remained inde- 
structible. To-day India is nothing more than a vast 
congeries of these little bodies of landholders. 38 Not 
only is the ownership of the soil made the basis of 
political organization : it is also a chief source of social 
consideration. 89 Indeed, this high regard for landed 
property may be said to be the absorbing sentiment 
of popular life in its secular relations. Civil liberty 
and all those personal rights for which the Greek or 
Roman citizen struggled so fiercely have been care- 
lessly surrendered by the Hindoo. His conservatism 
turns into a different channel : it especially manifests 
itself in an almost fanatical attachment to the soil. 40 

Such, then, is the normal and necessary action of 
the Oriental spirit. Despising the human, and re- 
vering external nature, it tends to organize society 
upon a basis, not personal, but territorial. It main- 
tains the preponderance of the country over the city. 
It fosters that respect for the land, that attachment to 
the soil, of which classical life knew absolutely noth- 
ing, but which played so important a part in the 

37 Elphinstone, India. 

28 Heeren, Asiatic Nations, Politics, etc., ii. 259. 

3 9 Elphinstone, India, i. 131. 40 Westminster Review, 1868. 



THE CATHOLIC AGE. 121 

formation of mediaeval society. The first character- 
istic feature of feudalism is thus clearly seen to be an 
outgrowth of that Oriental spirit which Catholic 
Christianity infused into European life. We have 
now to seek the origin of the second element. 

Roman jurisprudence sought always to give the 
landed proprietor the most absolute ownership of his 
estate. The spirit of the law was hostile even to the 
joint-ownership of property : it tended constantly to 
vest a perfect title in a single individual. 41 By the 
invention of wills or testamentary dispositions it 
carried the right of property to a still higher degree 
of perfection, — giving to the owner a control of his 
possessions which lasted, to some extent, even after 
death. In Germanic usage the same spirit reigns, 
although, of course, it had not yet given birth to the 
subtle contrivances of Roman law. Nowhere in the 
Pagan West do we find a trace of the movement 
which burdened feudal proprietorship with a host of 
charges and limitations, and enfeebled the right of 
property in the last degree. 42 

In Indian jurisprudence, on the other hand, the 
principle of joint-tenancy is favored as zealously as it 
had been discountenanced by Roman law. The lands 
are almost universally held by the village community : 
each member thereof enjoys the use of a particular 

41 Maine, Ancient Law, 261. 

42 Laboulaye, Du Droit de Propriete, 384. 



122 THE SECRET OE CHRISTIANITY. 

parcel of ground; but no one can alienate his right 
without the consent of the others. Besides these 
village communities, the sovereign has a certain claim 
upon the land, his Hen being in fact more absolute 
than any other. In this way the right of property 
floats indecisively about between the individual pro- 
prietor, the community, and the sovereign, so that 
there is no complete ownership vested in any one. 
And the sale of lands, the transfer even of the feeble 
possessory title of the holder, was something virtually 
unknown in India before the advent of British rule. 

The origin, then, of this second element of feudal- 
ism — of these shadowy and imperfect tenures — is 
very evident. It was the natural product of that 
Oriental spirit which always strives to repress human 
individuality, — which tends, consequently, to ignore, 
or, at least, to weaken, to restrict, to mutilate rights 
of every kind, and the right of property among the 
rest. As was to be expected this tendency ruled 
Catholicism from the very first. St. Augustine, Avho 
first systematically elaborated the Catholic doctrine, 
proclaims a theory of propert}^ which has well been 
called "a sort of sacred communism." 43 He denies 
that there is any right of property naturally vested in 
the individual : all things belong to God ; the unbe- 
liever has no right of property whatsoever ; the believer 

43 Nourisson, Philosophic de St. Augustin, ii. 402. 



THE CATHOLIC AGE. 123 

only a very feeble and imperfect one granted him by 
divine grace. The Catholic church could not afford 
to officially proclaim such principles, but their spirit 
rules everywhere in her history. And therein lies the 
source of the narrow, imperfect tenures of feudalism. 

The two distinctive elements of the feudal system 
— the territorial basis of sovereignty, and the imper- 
fect restricted ownership which characterized the 
fief — have both been found to have one origin. 
Feudalism in its essence has been proved to be a 
creation of that new spirit which Catholic Christianity 
introduced into European life. 

It has been very confidently asserted, by those most 
entitled to judge, that the traces of a former feudal 
system are to be found in every part of India. 44 
Amid the obscurity and doubt which overshadow 
Oriental history, it may be difficult to pronounce 
decisively upon this assertion ; nor is it necessary 
for our purpose. It is sufficient to know that the 
two germinal principles of feudalism are a necessary 
product of the Oriental spirit, and have, in fact, 
always characterized the structure of Hindoo society. 
Whether these principles were ever developed into 
a political system precisely similar to that of the 
middle ages is a question of history and not of phi- 
losophy. 

44 Tod, Feudal System in India ; Asiatic Journal, n. s., v. 44 : 
where other authorities are quoted. 



124 THE SECRET OE CHRISTIANITY. 

It remains now to examine the influence of this 
Catholic or feudal system of social organization upon 
the course of European development. 

Classical civilization, founded upon a purely per- 
sonal basis, was of too subtle and delicate a nature to 
thrive except beneath the guardianship of city walls, 
in some few favored spots of Southern Europe. Car- 
ried over a wide area, by the brute force of the 
Roman soldiery, it had formed a frail and transient 
organization of society, the quick decay of which 
had only been hastened by the shock of invasion. 
The Empire fell, because classical civilization was 
adapted only to a city and not to a continent. A new 
spirit and a new order of ideas were needed to per- 
manently civilize the wide area of Europe. 

The basis of such a civilization it was the mission 
of Catholic feudalism to supply. Its first work was 
to repress that vagrancy natural to the Germanic 
bands, — natural, indeed, to all men whose only bond 
of union is the sentiment of fidelity to their chieftain. 
It accomplished this by that substitution of a ter- 
ritorial for a personal basis of sovereignty which we 
have already described. Instead of the old Germanic 
impulse which ranged a roving band of warriors 
around the standard of some favorite leader, it sub- 
stituted the new sentiment of attachment to the soil. 
It made the permanent possession of the land the 
sole source of all social pre-eminence and political 



THE CATHOLIC AGE. 125 

authority. Thus the nomadic instinct was restrained, 
and a fixed and stable population was formed. 

But the best work which feudalism accomplished 
for mankind came to light only in the expiring mo- 
ments of the system. In the course of a few centu- 
ries, the royal power emerged from its temporary 
obscuration, the petty feudal lords passed into the 
condition of a landed aristocracy, and a few great 
kingdoms arose upon the ruins of the feudal organi- 
zation. It was then that there was manifested that 
vast revolution which Catholic feudalism had been 
slowly effecting in the political sentiment of Chris- 
tendom. 

For as the fiefs began to grow into kingdoms, the 
really vital ideas which the old system had nour- 
ished did not perish, but only assumed a more com- 
prehensive form. The idea of a feudal domain 
developed into the conception of a common country, 
where mountain-ranges and ocean-shores united the 
people within their limits, just as the petty boundaries 
of the fief once had doite. The feudal feeling of 
attachment to the soil, narrow and local at first, ex- 
panded into the sentiment of love for one's native 
land. The feeble central authority, for instance, 
which had so long hung over the territory of the 
Franks, grew into a genuine government, firmly con- 
solidated and possessed of true imperial powers. The 
people, if they had been imbued with classical modes 



126 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

of thought, would now have simply regarded them- 
selves as the citizens of a great empire. But, under 
that subtle and mysterious feeling of" attachment to 
the soil which feudalism had generated, they came 
to recognize each other as inhabitants of a com- 
mon country. The idea of France was created, and 
ever afterwards remained an imperishable bond of 
union between all those gathered within its bor- 
ders. Throughout all Western Europe the same 
revolution had been going silently on. The natural 
boundaries of his native land became for the Euro- 
pean what the city walls had been for the Greek or 
Roman. The civic patriotism of classical life had 
been replaced by that more comprehensive love of 
country which forms the absorbing political senti- 
ment of modern times. 

This legacy of feudalism rendered possible all sub- 
sequent advances in the political history of Europe. 
It gave to the states of Christendom that enduring 
vitality which has enabled them to pass through the 
revolutionary periods of Pr&testantism and to undergo 
the most radical reforms without becoming totally 
disorganized. The kingdoms of modern times are 
held together, not, as those of antiquity, by brute force 
or the feeble power of artificial institutions, but by 
that mystic love of country which does not depend 
upon any particular form of government, and outlasts 
all political changes. A national life has been formed 



THE CATHOLIC AGE. 127 

superior to all accidents of the state, — a life which 
revolutions may purify, but cannot destro}'. In a 
word, among all the contributions made to human 
progress, there have been none greater than this love 
of country, — this subtle sentiment of attachment to 
the soil of one's native land, — which feudalism be- 
queathed, in its expiring moments, to the civilization 
of Europe. 

There are some other features of social life in the 
middle ages which, although of minor importance, de- 
mand our notice. One of these — the independence of 
the spiritual power — is so readily explained by our 
fundamental law, that it is only necessary to call 
attention to the fact. Another — the condition of 
the laboring classes — will be considered when we 
come to treat of Protestant civilization. There is 
still another feature — the Catholic influence upon 
the condition of woman — that must now be briefly 
described. 

The Oriental spirit has always tended to emphasize 
the distinction between the sexes. It lacks that rev- 
erence for human nature which raises all conditions 
of life to a common level of dignity. The inferior 
estate of woman is established by the same divine 
and immutable law which has separated one caste 
from the other. Even Sakyamuni, who represents 
the struggling spirit of reform in Oriental life, could 



128 



THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 



not free himself from this feeling. Woman, in his 
conception, is essentially corrupt and impure ; 45 in 
her life the inherent sinfulness of man is trebly inten- 
sified. That is the final word of Orientalism. Woman 
is regarded as an inferior being. Her virtue demands 
the most jealous guarding : all her surroundings must 
be designed solely for the preservation of her purity. 
It is, in a word, the principle of castes applied to the 
female sex. 

But all this was changed in the Pagan West. The 
Greek woman was free, — all the more so where Ori- 
ental innovations were unknown. 46 If a certain degree 
of seclusion and subordination was imposed upon her, 
it originated in reasons of domestic or public policy : 4T 
it sprang from no Oriental contempt for woman- 
kind ; it was nowhere universal, and constantly tended 
to disappear. In Sparta the two sexes mingled upon 
terms of perfect and even immodest freedom. 48 Plato, 
in his ideal commonwealth, developed to still greater 
extremes the Spartan ideas concerning the co-educa- 
tion of the sexes. 49 The history of Roman law is a 
monument of the constant progress of the female sex 
towards independence and social freedom. Step by 

45 Hardy, Eastern Monackism, 166. 

46 Van Limburg Brouwer, Hist, de la Civilization des Grecs, iv. 145. 

47 Aristotle, Politic, i. 5 ; Oeconom., iii. 4. 

48 F. Jacobs, Ver. Schriflen, iii. 204. 

49 Plato, Republic, v. 452, seq. 



THE CATHOLIC AGE. 129 

step, woman approached a position of perfect legal 
equality with man. 50 

But this freedom was gained through a terrible 
sacrifice. In the same degree that classical life eman- 
cipated woman, it lost sight of that pre-eminently 
feminine virtue upon which Oriental thought is fixed. 
Chastity seems to have been held in no very high 
esteem even in the primitive Homeric times. 51 In 
Sparta, licentiousness was expressly sanctioned by a 
strange and infamous law. 52 At Rome, the strict matri- 
monial forms of earlier times fell gradually into dis- 
use : marriage became a temporary contract, imposing 
no serious obligations upon either party ; the wife 
was emancipated from the inequalities and rigors of 
the ancient law, but only at the expense of virtue and 
decency. 53 In fact, freedom and unchastity advance, 
hand in hand, throughout the whole course of classi- 
cal civilization. 

But in the Catholic ages the movement was entirely 
reversed. Chastity was exalted at the expense of 
freedom. The sphere of woman was narrowed and 
sharply distinguished from that of man. She had 
been a priestess in ancient Greece and Rome : she 
was now debarred from all ecclesiastical functions. 
The work of legal emancipation, to which Roman 

50 Meiners, Gesch. d. weiblichen Geschlechts, i. 369 ; Picot, Du Ma- 
riage Romain, 125, 245, etc. 

51 Ibid., i. 318. 52 Xen., De Rep. Lacedaemon, i. 

68 Schmidt, La Societ€ Civile dans le Monde Romain, 37, 417, etc. 
6* i 



130 THE SECRET OP CHRISTIANITY. 

jurisprudence had devoted itself, was all undone : in 
its place feudal law established those unjust pro- 
visions, concerning the rights and property of woman, 
which we are just beginning to abolish. True, woman 
was made the recipient of an extravagant and florid 
homage during the middle ages. But this mediseval 
gallantry was, in the main, sentimental and unreal: 
it exhausted itself in wild rhapsodies or absurd ad- 
ventures, while it left the real woman of common life 
in the same position of helpless dependence that it 
found her. 54 The Catholic system had but one aim, 
so far as the female sex was concerned. It was en- 
grossed with a truly Oriental labor, — the exaltation 
of chastity. 

But that work was the first one needed. After 
Catholicism had thoroughly instilled the sentiment 
of chastity into European life, woman could safely 
march on to a position of freedom and social equality. 
Without this preliminary work, her advance in mod- 
ern times would have ended as shamefully as it did 
in Greece or Rome. 

54 Schnaase, Gesch. d. bild. Kunst, iv. 32, seq. 



THE CATHOLIC AGE. 131 



CHAPTER V. 

THE catholic AGE. {Continued.*) 

THE same law which ruled the social, ruled also 
the intellectual, development of the middle 
ages. Catholic art, literature, and philosophy, — all 
were creations of this Oriental impulse which gradu- 
ally became supreme in European life. 

Art especially was completely revolutionized. The 
clear placid naturalism of antiquity was replaced by 
an intense and fervid supernaturalism. The aesthetic 
sentiment had yielded to a new impulse : once dwell- 
ing amid the earthy and the human, it was now en- 
grossed with the spiritual and the eternal. But still 
this Orientalizing tendency was not carried to its 
worst extremes. It was held partially in check by 
the influences of that Western spirit to which Cath- 
olicism opposed itself. Thus art was enabled to 
preserve the old classical instinct for definiteness ; 
it did not abandon itself to those grotesque and 
dreamlike exaggerations in which the intense super- 
naturalism of Indian art had ended. Mediaeval 



132 THE SECBET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

genius, while yielding to the religions spirit of the 
East, still clung tenaciously to the artistic traditions 
of the West. 

Our limits will not permit us to follow out this 
principle through the different branches of mediaeval 
art and literature. Nor is it at all necessary : the 
conclusions to which we should come are within the 
reach of any thoughtful mind. But there is one fact 
of immense importance which does not lie so plainly 
upon the surface, and therefore demands our careful 
attention. That fact is that the Oriental spirit which 
ruled the art and literature of the middle ages in- 
stilled into European life the sentiment of love for 
nature. 

Let it first be remembered that the love for nature 
is something altogether different from the sense of 
physical enjoyment. Contact with the asternal 
world must at times be a source of delight to every 
man whether savage or civilized. The peaceful quiet 
of a midsummer's eve, the cool shade of the forest, 
the bracing breezes of the ocean, the song of birds, 
the music of running waters, — these afford an enjoy- 
ment to which no one can be entirely insensible. 
Especially must the sensitive Greek have vividly felt 
this sensuous delight, dwelling as he did in a land 
steeped in the most delicious sunlight and prodigal 
of the most varied beauties. But all this is something 



THE CATHOLrC AGE. 133 

very different from that subtle sympathy with nature 
and her ways — that humble recognition of her mys- 
teries and reverence even for her lowliest works — 
which is so deeply infused into the modern spirit. 
The merely physical enjoyment is sterile : it is de- 
structive of thought, rather than creative. It is 
content with the passing moment, and does not seek 
to perpetuate itself in the forms of poetry and art. 
Nature, therefore, when it exerts only this sensuous 
influence upon a people, can never become the theme 
or the inspiration of any great intellectual labor. At 
the very best, it can only furnish the background of 
the picture. Always some human or divine per- 
sonality stands as the central and chief object of 
interest. 

This simple distinction seems often to be strangely 
overlooked. In this way many have been led to 
deny that the Hellenic genius was devoid of a true 
love for nature, 1 and have laboriously compiled quo- 
tations in support of their opinion. But their proofs 
are always irrelevant to the issue. The passing 
allusion of a poet to some beauty of natural scenery 
attests nothing to the purpose. " The Greek poet," 
as Schiller has well said, 2 " is certainly in the highest 
degree correct, faithful, and circumstantial in his 
descriptions of nature ; but his heart has no more 

1 Hare, Guesses at Truth, 50 ; Felton, Lectures on Greece, et al. 

2 Sammtliche Werke, xviii. ; in Humboldt's Casinos, ii. 21. 



184 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

share in his words than if he were treating of a gar- 
ment, a shield, or a suit of armor." His description 
is merely incidental. He grasps only the outward 
sensuous element 3 and never discovers that nature has 
an inner life as mysterious and suggestive as that of 
man. Therefore, the varied scenes of human life, 
the deeds of heroes and gods, furnish the only true 
inspirations of his art. To him the still scenes of the 
forest grew poetic only as they were associated with 
the story of some nymph or goddess. He never 
dreamed that in the deepest solitudes of Nature, 
unrelieved by a single human figure and consecrated 
by no myth nor legend, there were yet to be found 
the richest treasures of beauty and of truth. 

The Oriental spirit, upon the other hand, is char- 
acterized by a most profound and reverent sentiment 
for nature. 4 The Indian poet is not content with a 
passing allusion to the beauties of the external world. 
He lingers long and tenderly upon the theme : it 
forms the chief inspiration of his art. In one of the 
most brilliant poems of Kalidasa, the central subject 
is the landscape and its influence upon a mind agi- 
tated by strong emotions. 5 The Gitagovinda evinces 
the same intense sympathy for nature and vivid 
appreciation of her charms. 6 In a fragment of the 

3 Schnaase, Gesch. d. bildenden Kunst, ii. 93. 

4 Lassen, Ind. Alterthumskunde, ii. 511. 

5 Humboldt (Cosmos, ii. 53), note by Goldstucker. 

6 Gitagovinda, trans. Sir W. Jones, Works, iv., especially pages 237, 
255. See also a Hymn to the Night, Ibid., xiii. 380. 



THE CATHOLIC AGE. 135 

Brahma Purana the soul is described as ravished by 
a sense of the mysterious harmony which pervades 
the outer world. 7 Herein, in fact, all Indian litera- 
ture is animated by a common spirit. The Greek 
poet was a student of men : the Hindoo is a lover 
of nature. 

It was the mission of Catholicism to incorporate 
this, in common with other Oriental tendencies, into 
the life of Europe. Even in the writings of the 
Fathers, we trace the first movings of that rever- 
ence for nature which was to mould the thought of 
all subsequent ages. In them the charms of solitude, 
the peaceful delights of a life passed in calm contem- 
plation of nature, are portrayed in terms of the most 
glowing eloquence. The works of art which had 
formed the glory and pride of the ancient Greek all 
sink into insignificance by the side of the wonders 
which lie concealed amid the solemn twilight of the 
forest or the weird recesses of the mountains. Even 
man himself loses the dignity with which ancient art 
had clothed him. The deeds of heroes, the most 
tragic scenes of human life, all grow tame in compari-' 
son with what a single night would reveal to a watcher 
of the heavens. " When," says Gregory of Nyssa, 8 
" I see every ledge of rock, every valley and plain 
covered with new-born verdure, the varied beauty 

7 Chezy, Die Einsiedelei, etc., in Schlegel's Indische Bibliothek, i. 270. 

8 S. Gregorii Nysseni, Opera, in Humboldt's Cosmos, ii. 42. 



136 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

of the trees and the lilies at my feet decked by nature 
with the double charm of perfume and of color, 
when in the distance I see the ocean toward which 
the clouds are borne, my spirit is overwhelmed with 
a sadness not wholly devoid of enjoyment. When in 
autumn the fruits have passed away, the leaves have 
fallen, and the branches of the trees, dried and 
shrivelled, are robbed of their leafy adornments, we 
are instinctively led, amid the everlasting and regular 
change in creation, to feel the harmony of the won- 
drous power pervading all things. He who con- 
templates them with the eye of the soul feels the 
littleness of man and the greatness of the universe." 

Similar utterances abound in the Patristic pages. 
Everywhere we find the proof that a new conviction 
was being infused into the heart of Europe, that the 
old reverence for humanity was giving way before the 
humbler sentiment of love for nature. 

In the middle ages this sentiment gradually incor- 
porated itself into the popular life : it advanced in 
the exact degree that the old Pagan spirit vanished 
before the influences of Catholic Christianity. It has 
been remarked, for instance, by one profoundly versed 
in early Germanic literature, that very few traces of 
a sentiment for nature are to be found in the Niebu- 
lungen or Grudrun, while they abound in the chivalric 
poetry of the Minnesingers. Evidently this fact is 
inexplicable, if there is, as German patriotism is so 



THE CATHOLIC AGE. lo7 

ready to maintain, 9 a characteristic bent of the Ger- 
manic mind towards the contemplation of nature. 
On the other hand, the apparent anomaly disappears 
in a moment in the light of the theory which we are 
now advancing. The Niebulungen and the G-udrun 
are relics from the wreck of heathen life, which had 
been handed down through the medium of popular 
tradition. 10 But the poetry of the Minnesingers is 
indigenous to Catholic soil ; with its strange blend- 
ing of the religious and the military spirit it presents 
an admirable type of life in the middle ages. Here, 
then, as we might expect, we find the clearest mani- 
festations of that love for nature which is so rarely 
exhibited in the more primitive Niebulungen. 

This growing love for nature is still more clearly 
exhibited in the Animal Epos, of which the romance 
of Reynard the Fox forms the most famous specimen. 
This kind of composition, wherein animals instead of 
men form the central figures of a truly epic narrative, 
is absolutely without a model in classical literature. 11 
Its immense popularity in the middle ages shows 
how wide-spread had become the feeling which in- 
vests the lower orders of life with a mysterious in- 
terest. The old reverence for humanity had faded 
gradually away. Man no longer stands in a position 

9 J. Grimm, in Humboldt's Cosmos, ii. 45, 46. 

10 Bunsen, God in History, iii. 226. 

11 Gervinus, Gesch. der Deutschen Dichtung, i. 132. 



138 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

of isolated grandeur. The feeling for nature, even 
in what were once deemed its most insignificant 
parts, had woven itself into the popular sympathies 
and become the most fruitful source of poetic inspira- 
tion. 12 

Nor can this fondness for the Animal Epos be 
claimed as a special characteristic of any particular 
nationality. The romance of Reynard the Fox gained 
even a wider popularity, and was more assiduously 
developed, in France than in Germany. 13 And in 
addition to this kind of composition there sprang up 
in early French literature another, of which " the 
Romance of the Rose " forms the type. In this once 
famous poem a rose becomes the central figure : it 
occupies, in fact, the same position in the piece that 
the city of Troy does in the Iliad. The work gained 
a wonderful success, 14 which serves to show how 
wide-spread the sentiment for nature had become in 
the middle ages. The Partenopex, another famous 
production of those days, is characterized by the 
same spirit. 15 In a word, true poetic sympathy with 
nature and her works is everywhere evinced in the 
mediaeval literature of France. 

12 D'Assailly, Les Chevaliers Poe'tes de VAllemagne, 192. 

13 Thorn, Percy Society Collections, xii. 54. 

14 Roquefort, La Poesie Frangoise dans le dovzieme et treizieme 
Siecles, p. 170. 

15 L'Histoire Lit. de la France, xvi. 233 ; Partenopex, trans. S. 
Rose, 85. 



THE CATHOLIC AGE. 139 

The same characteristic comes out with still greater 
clearness in the poetry of Dante. Humboldt has 
proved this by ample citations: but at the same time 
he has strangely presented the m}'Sticism of the poet 
as something which interferes with the manifestation 
of his love for nature. 16 Nothing could be farther 
from the truth. Dante's sensibility to the charms of 
the outer world springs from the mystical tendencies 
so thoroughly interwoven into his thought. Without 
these tendencies the classical poet gazed listlessly 
upon the merely sensuous beauties of the outer world ; 
with them Dante stands rapt in admiration of that 
order and harmony which makes " the universe re- 
semble God." 

The art, as well as the literature of the middle 
ages, gives evidence of the newly awakened senti- 
ment for nature. It is especially so in architecture. 
The Greek temple was a pure creation of the human 
intellect : its beauty consisted in mathematical pro- 
portions so absolutely perfect that modern art has not 
yet been able to rediscover them. Mediaeval archi- 
tecture, upon the other hand, is not so much a crea- 
tion from within as an echo from without. The 
Gothic cathedral is man's response to the mysterious 
suggestions of nature : we are invincibly reminded of 
the still life of the woods as we pause amid its vaulted 
aisles, and peer into its darkened recesses. The 

16 Humboldt, Cosmos, ii. 62. 



140 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

temple is a chiselled geometry: the cathedral, a 
forest cut in marble. 

The rise of landscape painting in the later middle 
ages is another signal proof of our proposition. This 
branch of art was virtually unknown to ancient civi- 
lization except in the East. In classical painting the 
landscape formed only the unnoticed " back-ground 
of historical compositions, or an accidental decoration 
for painted walls." 17 It is true that in the later 
periods of Roman civilization the painter sometimes 
takes a piece of natural scenery as an independent 
theme for his pencil ; but he gives us as the result of 
his labors maps and bird's-eye views rather than 
genuine landscapes. His delineations are marked by 
the same lack of deep and earnest sympathy with 
nature which caused Greek idyllic poetry to dwell 
only upon the useful, the agreeable, the merely sen- 
suous aspect of the outer world. His themes are the 
town, the villa, the artificially arranged garden, what- 
ever seems pleasant and comfortable. There is noth- 
ing of the freedom and the mysterious charms of 
natural life. But in the fourteenth century we 
behold the first revelations of a new spirit. The 
movement thus begun by the miniature painters was 
continued and perfected in the fifteenth century 
through the labors of the brothers Van Eyck. 18 The 

U Humboldt, Cosmos, ii. 83. 

18 Kugler, Gesch. der Malerei, i. 262. 



THE CATHOLIC AGE. 141 

landscape becomes an essential element in the com- 
position, painted with the utmost truth to nature, and 
imparting its impressive tone to every part of the 
picture. And thus, in an age and a land intensely 
agitated by that outburst of mystical fervor which 
formed the final phase of Catholicism, landscape 
painting sprang suddenly into life. This slow-grow- 
ing flower of art, flourishing before only in the far 
East, 19 blooms out at last on Western soil under the 
fiercest beams of mediaeval mysticism. 

And so upon every side we witness the signs of the 
great revolution which had been going on for so many 
centuries. Nor was it a change affecting merely the 
literary and artistic development of the times : it 
entered even into the framework of social organiza- 
tion. Feudal sovereignty, as we have seen, was vested 
in the ownership of the land. The source of dignity 
and authority was no longer in man, but in the free 
wild nature around him ; while the human being be- 
came a mere appendage of the soil. Certainly, there 
is no more suggestive fact in history than this hereto- 
fore unnoticed one. How sweeping must have been 
the revolution of thought that so degraded man, who 
once had been the centre of all interest, the solitary 
theme for the pen of the poet or the pencil of the 
artist ; that, upon the other hand, elevated nature 
into so high a place, clothed her with so mysterious 

19 Schnaase, Geschichte der bildenden Kunst, i. 186. 



142 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

a power, that the ownership of the merest bit of land 
changed the rank of a human being from that of slave 
to sovereign ! 

The new impulse, in the end, permeated even the 
life and thought of the common people. At the close 
of the middle ages and the culmination of the Cath- 
olic system, it had penetrated so deeply into the pop- 
ular life that we find even the unlettered seamen 
and mere adventurers, who went forth upon that 
wonderful career of geographical discovery which 
signalized the age, displaying a poetic susceptibility 
to the charms of the external world, to which the 
highest culture of Greece can furnish no parallel. 20 
And when we read the recitals of Columbus, for 
instance, glowing in every page with the most rever- 
ent admiration for the natural beauties that were 
displayed along the path-way of his explorations, we 
comprehend that it was the fostering of this feeling 
for nature amid the darkness of the middle ages, 
which formed the true prelude to the grand era of 
geographical discovery and of modern progress. 

Such, then, is the origin of the modern love of 
nature. An exotic in the West, it grew up, at first, 
under the sheltering influences of mediaeval faith. The 
shelter was long since swept away, but the plant has 
still thriven grandly. And men have now quite for- 
gotten that it is not indigenous, — that before the 

20 Humboldt, Examen Critique de I'Histoire de la Geographic, 240. 



THE CATHOLIC AGE. . 143 



Catholic age it was almost unknown on Western 



soil. 



It would, of course, be utter folly to attempt a 
survey of Catholic philosophy within these narrow 
limits. We wish merely to notice the chief, and in 
fact, the only objection that can be brought against 
our theory in this regard. The theory demands, it 
may be said, that a Platonic or Oriental idealism 
should predominate in the schools of mediaeval phi- 
losophy ; but, in reality, Aristotle is everywhere ac- 
knowledged as the master. Concerning this, several 
things must be noted. 

First of all, the ascendancy of Aristotle was the 
result of accident, and therefore furnishes no index 
to the real spirit or tendency of mediaeval thought. 
The schoolmen were Aristotelians from compulsion 
and not from choice. Of the works of Plato, they 
had only a fragmentary and second-hand knowledge, 
entirely too imperfect, as Abelard 21 confesses, to per- 
mit of correct judgment concerning the Platonic 
doctrine. Compelled by the mediaeval instinct of 
faith to follow some authority, they had no resource 
except to the Stagyrite. But they never fail, when 
the occasion demands, to interpret his words in ac- 
cordance with those idealistic convictions which lay 
at the basis of their philosophy and of their religion. 

21 Dialeetica, 205. 



144 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

The formal ascendancy of Aristotle was aided by 
another cause. Out of chaos the Catholic polity had 
finally risen into a system marvellous in its order and 
proportions ; and there was now demanded an intel- 
lectual organization which should correspond to the 
social one. As life had already been, so mediaeval 
thought was now to be, organized into a system 
encyclopedic in its grasp and perfectly elaborated in 
all its parts. In such a work Plato, even if he had 
been better known, could have rendered but little 
aid ; for the intensely poetic element in his nature 
had rendered him averse to all systematic elaboration 
of his doctrine. But the categories, the formulas, 
the subtle analysis, all the immense logical apparatus 
of Aristotle, supplied precisely what the schoolmen 
needed ; and they bow before the master whom cir- 
cumstances had thus imposed upon them, with a true 
Oriental servility. 22 Still, scholasticism is the soul of 
Plato in the body of Aristotle. A combination was 
effected similar to that exhibited in the creation of 
mediaeval art. For, as the painting of the middle 
ages holds fast to the sesthetic forms, the delicacy 
and grace of classical art, while its inner life is every- 
where inspired by the vivid supernaturalism of the 
East, so the scholastic philosophy in its form is Aris- 
totelian or Hellenic, but in its spirit is Platonic and 
Oriental. 23 

22 Bacon, Novum Organum, lib. i. aph. 77. 

23 Cousin, Fragments Philos. Scolastique, 102. 



THE CATHOLIC AGE. 145 

This combination was rendered less difficult by 
that idealistic haze which surrounds the thought of 
Aristotle. The Stagyrite, as we have seen, 24 appears 
to have been profoundly impressed by some of the 
results of the Platonic speculations, and to have 
strenuously sought to incorporate them into his own 
system of doctrine. His theory of essential forms is 
a skilful endeavor to evade empiricism and to grasp 
the universal and the necessary while adhering to the 
postulates of sensational philosophy. It is true that 
in this attempt he utterly failed ; and, out of a won- 
derful maze of obscure and subtle refinements, he 
finally emerges at the very opposite pole of thought 
from that of idealism. But the schoolmen, with 
whom the critical spirit was at its lowest ebb, were 
easily imposed upon, by the idealistic gloss upon the 
face of the Peripatetic philosophy. They recognized 
no essential difference between the doctrine of Plato 
and that of his rival. They ascribed their own favor- 
ite opinions, indifferently either to the one or the 
other. 25 But, especially, they looked with approval 
upon what seemed to them the moderate and quali- 
fied realism of the Stagyrite. 26 

Out of these adventitious circumstances arose that 
Aristotelian ascendancy which has frequently misled 

24 Ante, 72. 

25 H&ureau, Philos. Scolastique, ii. 10. 

26 Jourdain, Recherches sur les Traductions d'Aristote, 215. 



146 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

the students of mediaeval philosophy. 27 Orthodox 
scholasticism is Peripatetic only in form and pro- 
fession, not in spirit. It is true that the moderate 
realists unite in denouncing the supposed belief of 
Plato in the separate or independent existence of 
ideas. 28 But this hypostasizing of the universal forms 
no essential part of the idealistic faith : it is only a 
brilliant fancy, born of the poetic genius of Plato, 
aud sadly interfering with the logical perfection of his 
doctrine. The fundamental conception which char- 
acterizes the idealist is his belief in the unity of the 
universal. To him, the sensible particulars included 
in one class are only multiplied shadows of an un- 
seen reality. The species, therefore, is something 
more than the collection of individuals, the group of 
shadows which alone reveal themselves to sense : 
above and before the phenomenal is the true univer- 
sal by which the particulars are bound together in a 
real though mysterious unity. In this belief, the 
Aristotelian had and could have no share. To him 
there is nothing before the individual or the phe- 
nomenal : *the essential form is but the thing itself, 
stripped of its accidental accretions ; and the uni- 
versal is only a name for the aggregation of these 
naked particulars which have unity in logic, but only 

. 27 For instance, Ueberweg, History Philosophy, i. 444. 

28 Aquinas, Sentent. i., dist. xxxvi., quaest. 2, art. 1, Opera, Vene- 
tiis, 1754, ix. 465. 



THE CATHOLIC AGE. 147 

similarity in nature. Herein the two philosophies 
are as wide apart as heaven and earth, and there is 
no chance of compromise nor possible border-land 
between them. 

And whenever the orthodox schoolmen approach 
the true point at issue between the two systems of 
thought, they instantly desert the standard of Aris- 
totle. All unite in proclaiming the doctrine of 
universalia ante rem : all agree that, before the phe- 
nomenal began, the universal existed in the mind of 
God. Nor is this existence a merely abstract one, like 
that of a thought in the human mind. " The idea 
in God," says Aquinas, 29 " is nothing else than the 
essence of God. And, as if this was not sufficient, he 
shows us in another place that the idea in the divine 
intellect differs essentially from that in the human, 
because from the former the entirety of the thing 
produced — both its form and its matter — proceeds. 30 
Thus the unity of the universal is perfectly preserved. 
Several houses built according to one plan are only 
similar : but the several things included in the same 
species, he substantially says, 31 do not merely possess 
similitude; they infold one essence, — an ideal unity, 
imperceptible to sense, but really existent in the spirit 
of God. Duns Scotus, founder of the rival school to 

29 Summa Theol.,\. 15, 1; xx. 102. 

80 Quodlibetea, viii. 2 ; cf. Prantl, Logih, iii. 115. 

81 Albertus, De praed., ix. 3 ; cf. Prantl's Gesch. d. Logik, iii. 99. 



148 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

that of Aquinas, also teaches that the universal is not 
a figment of the intellect, but has a real and objective 
existence. 32 Particulars forming a natural kind have 
sprung in their entirety from one creative idea. The 
natural kiud is something more than the artificial 
group. It denotes not merely similarity, but a com- 
plete and essential unity. 

Albertus Magnus, although more embarrassed by 
the subtleties of the question, and oftener involving 
himself in inconsistencies than Aquinas, in the end 
plants himself firmly upon the same ideal-realistic 
conceptions. 33 When he reaches the real point at 
issue between the nominalists and realists, he un- 
hesitatingly pronounces in favor of the latter. In a 
word, the orthodox schoolmen, while rejecting the 
poetic fancy ascribed to Plato concerning the inde- 
pendent existence of ideas apart from the divine 
mind, abandon no essential part of idealism. From 
their stand-point the species is something more than a 
group of essences or a collection of particulars. Be- 
fore all phenomena the universal existed in the divine 
nature as the archetype of individuals, and the prin- 
ciple of unity by which they are bound together in a 
necessary and natural connection. 

In the fourteenth century the decadence of scholas- 

32 Duns Scotus, Qu. sup. Porphy., 4, 90, B ; 9, 93, B ; cf. Prantl, 
iii. 207. 

33 Bitter, Geschichte d. Christ!. Philos., iv. 214. Haureau (Philos. 
Scolast., ii. 98), " Le dernier mot <T Albert est realiste." 



THE CATHOLIC AGE. 149 

tii'ism had already begun. Philosophy, which in the 
hands of Albert and Aquinas 34 had been a com- 
bination of the Aristotelian logic with Neo-Platonic 
idealism or mysticism, now separates into its original 
elements. 35 Of the latter element, Eckhart and his 
followers became the representatives. With Aquinas, 
the mystical impulse had been held in check by the 
logical tendency: it was walled around by refine- 
ments always subtle and often unintelligible. But 
the German mysticism of the fourteenth and fifteenth 
centuries was without this logical counterbalance : it 
carried out its principles to their final results, even to 
the extent of effacing the distinctions of personality, 
and of destroying 'almost every humanistic element in 
the Christian religion. 36 The mystical tendencies of 
Catholicism had finally developed into a true Oriental 
theosophy. 

The other element in the dissolving scholasticism 
was taken up by Occam and his followers. Logic, 
losing its basis of Platonic idealism, 87 became nominal- 
istic, secular, and heterodox. The nominalism of 
Occam does not lead to theological heresies, as had 
that of Abelard or Roscellinus : it ignores theology 

34 Auber, Histoire du Symbol isme reliyiexix, ii. 633. 

35 Schmidt, Le Mysticisme Allemande, au quatorzieme Siecle ; Mem. de 
VAcad. des Sci. Mor. et Pol , viii. 534. 

38 Bossuet, Ordonnances, etc., in Taillandier's Scot Erigene. 
37 Prantl (Gesch. d. Logik, iii. 74); " ein platonisch christlicher 
Kealismus . . . der Grundton aller orthodoxen Logik." 



150 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

altogether, just as Aristotle had done. Albert had 
described true philosophy as consisting in the union 
of the Platonic and the Aristotelian, the nrvstical and 
the logical, element. 88 But this union — chief aim of 
pure scholasticism — Occam pronounced impossible. 
According to him, reason and faith are in irreconcil- 
able antagonism. The articles of religion are not 
even probable to the philosopher : they are utterly 
false, although they may be accepted on theological 
grounds. 39 When theology thus ceased to be regarded 
as the first and most perfect of philosophical sciences ; 
when reason was no longer recognized as the hand- 
maid of religion, but as an independent and hostile 
power, — scholasticism was virtually at an end. 

Nominalism, then, was essentially heretical : it was 
a protest against the mediaeval system, and chief 
among the instruments of its final overthrow. But 
orthodox scholasticism, as has been truly said, 40 
" never abandoned its first attachment to the Pla- 
tonic faith." Even when professing formal allegiance 
to Aristotle, it never swerves from a true Oriental 
idealism. 

Nor was this mediseval realism merely a barren 
speculation, a wild extravagance that bore no fruit. 

ss Albertus, Metaph., 67; in Sighart's Albertus Magnus, Sein Leben 
und sein Wissenchajl, 358. 

39 Occam, Summa.tot. Logic, iii. 6. 2; in Prantl's Logilc, iii. 397 ; also 
on the Trinity, see Expositio aurea, 6.5; in Prantl, iii. 348. 

40 Hampden, Aquinas, Encyc. Met., ii. 806. 



THE CATHOLIC AGE. 151 

On the contrary, it animated the poetry, the art, and 
the religion of the middle ages ; it ruled wherever 
there was earnest and fervid thought. 41 And it did 
not perish until it had thoroughly incorporated into 
European life a sentiment which has proved of price- 
less value. But of this we shall have to speak here- 
after. 

41 Rousselot, Philos. dans le Moyen Age, iii. 377. 



152 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 



CHAPTER VI. 



THE PROTESTANT AGE. 



WE now understand the nature of the work 
which Christianity performed during the 
middle ages. It arrayed itself in direct antagonism 
to the ruling tendencies of the West: in the place 
of the ancient spirit of freedom and self-reliance 
it established the impulse of faith, and the sense 
of human sinfulness ; it strove to regenerate the 
life of Europe. In this way the grandest results 
had been achieved. The lessons of self-sacrifice, of 
charity and obedience, which had swept away a cruel 
and intractable savagery, only somewhat more pol- 
ished at Rome than in the wilds of Germany ; the 
laying of those broad foundations upon which our 
modern liberties rest ; the implanting of an ideal- 
istic faith in the unseen, and of a poetic reverence 
for nature, in the place of those merely humanistic 
sympathies which had so narrowed the field of class- 
ical thought, — these are but fragments of that great 
work accomplished by Catholic civilization. 



THE PROTESTANT AGE. 153 

But the need for the prosecution of this work had 
finally ceased. Christendom had thoroughly learned 
the lesson which for centuries Catholic faith had 
been striving to teach : the first great transformation 
of Western life had been accomplished. The mission 
of Catholicism was, therefore, properly at an end. It 
had carried out its purpose even to those injurious 
extremes which seem inseparable from all human 
movements. Europe, at the end of the middle ages, 
was thoroughly Orientalized. A blind unthinking 
faith had gained complete mastery over the life and 
thought of the people : it had fostered an abject and 
servile submissiveness to authority, a superstition 
subservient to every priestly demand, a credulity 
which faltered before no marvel nor absurdity. In 
social life it had triumphantly established the Asiatic 
principle of despotism, jure divino ; it had sacrificed 
all private rights to the pretended interests of public 
order. It had completely stifled the old European 
aspirations for freedom and for truth : it had formed 
a population among whom ignorance was honorable, 
and servility a virtue. In a word, the Catholic faith 
had completely transformed the popular nature, and 
was fast pushing Europe into the final and most 
ruinous exaggerations of Oriental life. 

But the essence of Christianity, as we have seen, 
lies in its utter antagonism to the ruling tendency of 
the popular nature. Hence, Europe having become 



154 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

thoroughly Orientalized, there was no further need 
for an Oriental form of religion. Christianity, in 
accordance with its fundamental law, must now move 
around to the opposite pole of human thought. It 
must revive those tendencies of the human spirit 
which Catholicism had so completely crushed out 
of the popular life : it must become the champion of 
human liberties, the foe of authority, the defender of 
the rights of conscience and of opinion ; in a word, 
it must seek to restore the old Hellenic aspirations, 
and make them once more the supreme ideals. This 
sudden sweeping around of Christianity from one 
pole of development to the other, this surrender of 
the old impulse in order to preserve a constant antag- 
onism to the popular spirit, is called — the Reforma- 
tion. 

The Protestant movement, then, was not simply an 
intellectual revolt against Catholic error. It had its 
origin in a deep-rooted moral impulse : it was the 
development of that side of Christianity which had 
been stunted and almost paralyzed in the middle 
ages. The sense of need had, heretofore, been the 
prominent factor of Christian faith. Men had bowed 
in humble reverence before a divine authority and its 
priestly representatives. But now the love of the 
ideal began to be emphasized : Christian feeling grad- 
ually concentrated itself around the personality of 
Jesus ; ethical enthusiasm took the place of the 



THE PROTESTANT AGE. 155 

former reliance upon rites and sacrifices. Faith had 
formerly meant submission to the church and its 
rules : it now meant a direct and personal relation of 
the soul with God, — a relation doing away with all 
need of priests, and opening the path of religious 
liberty. 1 In a word, Christianity seemed suddenly 
transformed. It was animated by a new spirit and a 
new life. In a moment, then, began that work of 
reformation for which, as we have seen, the Paganism, 
1 oth of the East and the West, had proved itself so 
utterly incompetent. 

Entering now upon our survey of the civilization 
created by Protestant Christianity, we begin with its 
social development. And here, evidently, there is no 
need of that detailed description which was necessary 
in our account of the Catholic system. The charac- 
ter of that social evolution which has been going on 
in Europe since the sixteenth century is understood 
by all ; but the mediaeval regime is so far removed 
from our modern sympathies that its nature and 
results have been thoroughly misapprehended. Fur- 
thermore, the close affinity subsisting between the 
political movements of the Protestant period and 
those of classical antiquity has long been one of 
the commonplaces of history. Personal liberty, the 
sacredness of human rights, the supremacy of the 

1 Jager, Cajetan, Zje.it, Hist. Theal., xxviii. 455. 



156 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

popular will, these are the watchwords of progress 
in modern Europe as they were in ancient Greece. 
The patriot now receives the homage which the mid- 
dle ages bestowed upon the saint. The church and 
the state have been thoroughly divorced. Education 
and all public interests have been wrested from the 
control of the priesthood ; political and industrial 
questions are no longer settled according to the re- 
ceipts of theology ; in its rightful sphere, the secular 
spirit is everywhere supreme. 

The Hellenic spirit, then, is the controlling power 
in Protestant civilization. At the same time, we 
cannot be too often reminded that the social progress 
of the last few centuries has been rendered possible 
only through the preliminary work performed by the 
Catholic system. For lack of a similar preparation, 
Greece failed utterly to realize her political aspirations. 
Her social institutions, adapted only to the narrow 
limits and the artificial life of the cit} 7 , were based 
upon such frail and false foundations that only a con- 
tinual miracle could have ensured their permanence. 
But the Catholic system made the basis of public 
order, firm and enduring : it substituted the country 
for the city as the ideal of the state, and thus was 
enabled to organize vast empires, whose people were 
held together, not by the fragile bands of military 
force, but hy the strong sentiment of common nation- 
ality. Consequently, when the Protestant period 



THE PEOTESTANT AGE. 157 

arrived these massive organizations were enabled to 
withstand the shock of revolution; society, while 
being transformed by the new spirit of modern times, 
was yet saved from that anarchy and utter disintegra- 
tion which ended the political life of Greece, and 
from which Rome escaped only by the surrender of 
her liberties. It is this fundamental difference that 
separates ancient from modern society. The liberties 
of the one were of the frailest character, and only 
possible within the narrowest limits : those of the 
other are enduring, and may embrace a continent 
without loss of power or permanence. We see, then, 
how signal has been the triumph of Christianity. In 
the formation of modern society it has been enabled 
to weld together the best results of all prior civiliza- 
tions, — to combine in one s} T stem the solidity and 
vastness of social organization in the East, with the 
freedom and independence native to the West. 

This composite character extends not only to the 
social organization, but even to the controlling politi- 
cal ideas of modern times. Take the doctrine of the 
equality of rights for instance. We have been in the 
habit of regarding this as one of the simplest intui- 
tions that can spring up in a free soul : in reality, it 
is a sentiment of most complex character and origin. 
It was possessed by no ancient people in its fulness. 
The Greek fiercely asserted his own rights ; but he 
had no conception of human equality: he regarded 



158 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

the vast majority of men as slaves and outcasts, to 
whom he never dreamed of extending the privileges 
which he claimed for himself. The Oriental, on the 
other hand, had gained the idea of equality ; but it 
was an equality in misery and in the need of super- 
natural deliverance : it never led to any assertion of 
political rights, not even to an attempt at the aboli- 
tion of castes as a social distinction. 2 But Christianity 
has welded together what was good in the concep- 
tions both of the East and of the West. Catholicism 
taught to Europe that all men were equal within 
the pale of the church, all having the same needs and 
the same Deliverer. But it frowned upon every as- 
sertion of political rights : it inculcated, instead, the 
duty of resignation and passive obedience. ,At last 
Protestantism came with its fierce vindication of 
human rights, but not in the narrow and selfish spirit 
of the ancient Greek. Men, already taught that they 
were equal in religious life, began to learn that they 
were equal before the l.iw, — that all might properly 
claim the same political privileges and immunities. 
Evidently, then, the sentiment of equality is not so 
simple in its origin as it seems. Its elements have 
been gathered from the most divergent systems of 
thought, and have been combined only through the 
influence of Christian civilization. 

But leaving these general considerations to be pur- 

2 Ante, p. 30. 



THE PROTESTANT AGE. 159 

sued by the reader at his leisure, we must henceforth 
confine ourselves to that element in our modern social 
life which is at once its crowning triumph, and its 
most characteristic feature. \Ve refer, of course, to 
the industrial movement. 

Among the people of ancient Greece and Rome, 
we find the same active, enterprising spirit which has 
distinguished the life of Christendom during the last 
three centuries. But there were then two great 
obstacles, on account of which the spirit of enterprise 
was shut out from industrial pursuits and found 
outlet only in political excitement and military ad- 
ventures. These two obstacles — slavery and the 
contempt of labor — it was the mission of Catholicism 
to remove, and thus to prepare Europe for the march 
of modern industry. 

Slavery, or the ownership of human beings, was a 
natural product of the Western spirit. In India, on 
the other hand, as the Greeks themselves observed, 
there are no slaves. The Brahminical system had 
the faintest conception of rights of any kind: the 
natural instinct of ownership was reduced to its 
lowest ebb, and especially was the idea of claiming 
property in a human being something entirely op- 
posed to the traditions and the genius of the Indian 
people. Not, by any means, that man was held in 
higher regard in India than at Rome or Athens. On 
the other hand, the condition of the lower orders was 



160 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

equally abject and far more hopeless : a slave might 
become a freeman, but a Sudra could never reach 
the rank of Brahmin. At the same time, there was 
no right of property: there was serfdom, but not 
slavery. 

Catholic Christianity exerted, from the very first, 
a truly Oriental influence upon the slavery which it 
found everywhere prevalent in the West. In the 
later Brahminism and in Buddhism we find a grow- 
ing conviction that there is no radical nor essential dif- 
ference between the various orders of men ; that while 
some are destined for inferior, and some for superior, 
conditions of life, all are members of one body ; that 
all, in spite of outward diversities, are bound together 
in one organic whole. 3 This sentiment of equality, 
which does not in the least disturb the actual exist- 
ence of castes, was reproduced by Catholic Chris- 
tianity. There is neither bond nor free : all are one 
in Christ, St. Paul had said ; 4 and the statement 
seems to have been accepted by the Catholic Fathers 
in a sense quite different from the modern one. To 
them there was no essential difference between bond- 
age and freedom. Slavery was a divinely ordained 
institution : 5 it was one of the inevitable ills to which 
man was subject in his present sinful and mortal 

3 Windischman, Philosophic, etc., iii. 913. 

4 Col. iii. 11 ; Gal. iii. 28. 

5 Chrysostom, In Genes. Opp. iv. 659 ; cf . Mohler's Werke, ii. 91. 



THE PROTESTANT AGE. 161 

estate. Indeed, it may be regarded as the most per- 
fect development of human life, which is essentially 
servile. 6 Evidently, such a doctrine as this did not 
encourage any assertion of the rights of freedom : on 
the other hand, it insisted with the utmost solemnity 
upon the duty of strict obedience and submission. 7 
It was no proclamation of freedom, but a lesson of 
universal charit} 7 , tending to soften the hardships of 
slavery and encouraging the manumission of the slave 
by the voluntary act of his master. And such an 
amelioration of the rigors of the system did actually 
take place when Roman jurisprudence came under 
the influence of Christianity. 8 

The subsequent progress of the movement is ren- 
dered somewhat obscure by the claim so often made, 
that the abolition of slavery in the middle ages was 
due to the Germanic influence. But the claim has 
no foundation except in the absurdly exaggerated 
patriotism of German writers. On the contrary, 
the Northern nations arrested that amelioration of 
slavery which Christianity had already effected : they 
revived the most brutal features of the system as it 
had originally existed among the Romans. To the 



6 Ambrosius (De Fide, v. 109 ; Opp., ii. 570), " Formam servi 
accepit, id est plenitudinem perfectionis humanae, plenitudinem obe- 
dientiae." 

7 Augustin, De Civitate Dei, xix. 15. 

8 Wallon, Esclavage dans VAntiquite, iii. 413, seq. 



162 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Anglo-Saxon, 9 the Frank, 10 the Barbarians in general, 
the slave was merely a thing to be treated precisely 
as any other kind of property. 11 Even the coloni, 
who by the Roman law had been fixed to the soil, 
were reduced 12 to perfect bondage and placed at the 
absolute disposal of their masters. In a word, the 
system of slavery retrograded under Germanic influ- 
ence : it returned to its primitive stage of unmiti- 
gated ferocity and barbarism. 

It was the Christian, not the Germanic, spirit 
which abolished slavery in the middle ages. The 
church occupied, in this respect, precisely the same 
position which it had in the later ages of Roman 
civilization. It did not assert the right of freedom ; 
it proclaimed no law of emancipation ; it simply 
sought to ameliorate the condition of the slaves and 
to encourage their manumission. Thus, by a slow 
and gradual movement, slavery was abolished or 
rather was transformed into serfage. Inspired by 
a truly Oriental faith, the masters voluntarily re- 
nounced their acknowledged right of absolute owner- 
ship. They did so, not because they felt that the 
slave had a natural claim to freedom, but as an act 
of charity and of self-sacrifice for which they expected 

9 Sharon Turner, Hist. Anglo-Saxons, iii. 

10 Yanoski, Abolition de I'Esclavage ancien, 8. 

i l Leges Wallicae, iii. chap. 2. " Hero enim eadem potestas in 
servum ac in jumentum." 

12 Edict. Theodos., 142 : cf. Yanoski, 32. 



THE PROTESTANT AGE. 163 

recompense in the future. It was always this relig- 
ious motive which led to the act of manumission. 13 

The abolition of slavery, then, sprang not from an 
assertion, but a renunciation of rights. Through this 
distinction we gain a clear conception of the work 
which was really accomplished in the middle ages. 
Mediaevalism destroyed slavery, but it did not create 
freedom. Affranchisement did not bestow the privi- 
leges of civil liberty : it merely raised the slave into 
a higher but still servile condition. 14 And, upon the 
other hand, while the slave was elevated, the freeman 
was degraded : all the laboring classes were brought 
to one common level of serfage. 15 Thus equality was 
produced, but it was an equality in bondage and civil 
degradation. This work, so consonant with the spirit 
of medievalism, was all that could be then accom- 
plished. The other half of the movement was, for 
the most part, left to be effected by a different system 
of civilization. Only the Protestant spirit, planting 
itself upon a proud assertion of human rights, could 
raise the people from this equalized condition of serf- 
dom into a state of genuine liberty. 

Medievalism had precisely the same influence upon 
the ancient contempt of labor. The church found 
everywhere about it, at first, a wild and restless popu- 

M MGhler, Werke, ii. 126. 

14 Chavanne, Hist, des Classes A/jricoles en France, 68. 

15 Levasseur, Hist, des CLisses Ouvrieres en France, i. 170. 



164 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

lation, impregnated with a natural aversion to all 
useful or industrial pursuits. For this constitutional 
disease of barbarism, classical civilization could fur- 
nish no remedy : it tended rather to intensify the 
barbaric contempt for manual labor, to degrade indus- 
trial pursuits, 16 and to make idleness a badge of free- 
dom. But Catholic Christianity, here as elsewhere, 
directly reverses the ancient order of thought. Its 
ascetic temper degrades that which had been esteemed 
most honorable, and exalts that which had been most 
despised. Men were taught to shun idleness as they 
would any other pleasure of earthly life : they were 
commanded to labor in order to do violence to the 
natural inclinations of the flesh; 17 work became a 
sacrifice to be made in the spirit of Christian renun- 
ciation. Thus the old feeling of contempt passed 
away : the religious orders set the example of manual 
labor to the people about them ; agriculture and the 
useful arts flourished wherever a monastery was estab- 
lished. By an apparent anomaly, but really in entire 
accordance with the law of Christian civilization, the 
monkish or ascetic spirit became the means of transi- 
tion from ancient idleness to the industrial activity of 
modern times. 



lk > Seneca (Epist. ad Lucil. 90), for instance, indignantly denounces 
the idea, that philosophy should have any alliance with the vile 
industrial arts. 

17 St. Augustin, De Opere Monachorum, xxviii. ; Opera, vi. 862. 



THE PROTESTANT AGE. 165 

Tins monkish exaltation of labor was, of course, 
something very different from the true industrial 
spirit. Permanent and prosperous industry must 
have oilier foundations than the sentiment of sacrifice 
and the occasional ecstasies of the saint. Hence 
manual labor gained no firm footing in the monas- 
teries. It seems gradually to have been abandoned 
as the monks found their time more and more 'com- 
pletely occupied by other religious duties and sacri- 
fices deemed of greater importance. 18 In fact, the 
action of asceticism was that of a harsh and powerful 
medicine : it removed the disease, but enfeebled the 
system. At the close of the middle ages the medi- 
cine had accomplished its work, and was cast aside. 
Since then the active enterprising spirit of antiquity, 
cured of its diseased contempt for useful labor, has 
resumed its natural course, and gradually developed 
into the industrial energy which so distinguishes our 
modern civilization. 

We see, then, the work which the Protestant system 
was required to perform. Catholicism had removed 
the obstacles: it had prepared the way; but it could 
not inaugurate the industrial movement. On the 
other hand, it had repressed the natural activity of 
mankind by the influences of a faith engrossed with 
futurity, idealizing poverty, and inculcating a stolid 

i8 Romuald, Const. Cong. Camaldulensis, chap, xlviii. in Levasseur's 
Hist, des Classes Ouvrieres, i. 144. 



166 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

resignation to the worst ills and inconveniences of 
life. But Protestantism came to stimulate the spirit 
of enterprise. Turning the thought of men from the 
future to the present life, it furnished those normal 
incentives to labor upon which systematic industry is 
founded. But there was still something else needed 
before the modern industrial movement could really 
begin. 

In the middle ages both labor and capital were in 
a state of bondage : their movements were hampered 
by a host of absurd and oppressive restrictions which 
had naturally sprung from the Catholic system of 
repression. It was necessary that Protestant civiliza- 
tion should emancipate both of these industrial agents 
from their state of bondage, and thus give, each of 
them free scope for its energies. 

Every one knows that labor has been thus emanci- 
pated in the last few centuries. During the middle 
ages, even in those spots where industry had gained 
a precocious development, the liberty of the artisan 
was restricted by the most unjust and even barbarous 
statutes. According to the laws of Venice, for in- 
stance, a Venetian artisan who had removed to another 
city might be ordered to return by public authority : 
if he refused, his parents might be imprisoned; and if 
he still proved recusant, it was provided that an emis- 
sary of the State should be sent to assassinate him. 19 

19 Stat, de l' Inquisition d'Etat, 26 ; Daru, Hist, de Venise, vi. 305. 



THE PROTESTANT AGE. 167 

By such means as these, the laborer for wages was 
kept as near as possible to the condition of serfage 
from which he had just emerged; 20 and only after 
three centuries of Protestant civilization has he finally 
gained that perfect freedom which a true industrial 
policy demands. 

By the establishment of the system of commercial 
credit, capital has also been emancipated from its 
former estate of bondage, idleness, and unproduc- 
tivity. Mediaeval religion naturally tended to dis- 
courage that feeling of confidence between man and 
man upon which credit is based : as every one can 
see, the sense of sin and the sense of honor do not 
flourish well together. But with the decline of 
mediae valism a new spirit uprose. War, with its 
attendant suspicions and distrust, was no longer the 
normal state of Christendom. 

A sense of human dignity, bringing with it con- 
fidence in one's fellow-men, was slowly developed, — a 
sentiment that even yet is feeble, and often over- 
powered by our experience of human selfishness ; but, 
nevertheless, is strong enough to produce altogether 
a different state of feeling from that which prevailed 
in the middle ages. As a result of this feeling, came 
the development of commercial credit ; something long 
needed, but rendered impossible by the narrow, dis- 
trustful spirit of former centuries. 

20 Eden, State of the Poor, i. 41. 



168 THE SZCI1ET 02 CHRISTIANITY. 

The crude elements of the system, it is true, were 
to be found among the medkeval institutions. The 
Bank of Venice had been founded in the twelfth cen- 
tury, those of Genoa and Barcelona by the beginning 
of the fifteenth. But these resemble the modern 
bank in hardly any thing except the name. They 
were not designed for the same purpose, and did not 
enter upon the same field of operation. They had 
more of the character of governmental exchequers, — 
institutions designed to facilitate the financial opera- 
tions of the State rather than to extend commercial 
credit. 21 

The first real bank, in the modern sense of the 
term, was that of Amsterdam. And even this, 
although established so late as 1609, confined itself 
to a very narrow field of operations in comparison 
with that of our present banking system. It was 
simply a place of safe deposit, — designed only to give 
security, to facilitate the transfer of funds, and to 
afford some protection against losses from the debased 
and foreign coinage that flooded the city. The bank 
lent no money : 22 its vaults were always supposed to 
contain the full equivalent in specie of all the funds 
intrusted to its care. Its only source of profit was 
the large compensation exacted from the depositor 
for the privilege of having his money securely locked 

21 Blanqui, Hist, de I'Economie Politique, ii. 38. 

22 Ricard, La Negoce d' Amsterdam, 576. 



THE PROTESTANT AGE. 169 

up in the vaults of the establishment. To the modern 
banker, always eager to receive deposits, and often 
willing to give a large interest upon them, this would 
seem a very surprising state of affairs. Evidently 
capital had gained, even so late as the seventeenth 
century, but very few of the privileges which it now 
enjoys. So far from being able to find profitable 
investment, it was content, even in the greatest com- 
mercial centre of Europe, to pay a large bonus for the 
simple boon of security. But the establishing of the 
Bank of Amsterdam was a step in the right direction. 
From that time the system of commercial credit has 
been gradually developed, until it has reached its 
present gigantic proportions. Thus capital has been 
completely emancipated: it moves with the utmost 
freedom to the spot where it can receive employment 
and compensation. 

Modern industry, then, is of complex origin. Both 
ages of Christian civilization have combined for its 
production. The Protestant era has created the 
industrial impulse ; it has aroused the spirit of enter- 
prise, of proud striving, and of self-reliance : above 
all, it has broken down the mediaeval policy of re- 
striction and given free scope to the energies of capi- 
tal and labor. But all this would have amounted to 
nothing if Catholicism had not first abolished slavery 
and destroyed the ancient feeling of contempt for 
labor. In a word, the industrial movement, like every 

8 



170 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

other noble element of our modern life, is the child 
of two distinct systems of civilization, each of which 
has contributed something indispensable to its growth 
and prosperity. 

The intellectual development of the Protestant era, 
it need hardly be said, is marked by a constant recur- 
rence to the old Hellenic type of thought. The criti- 
cal rationalistic spirit of classical antiquity is once 
more in the ascendant. The mysticism, the engross- 
ment with the supernatural, the unquestioning faith, 
the commentatorial tendency and slavish reverence 
for authority, which characterized the middle ages, 
have all passed away : patient observation and per- 
fect freedom of thought have now become the watch- 
words of our intellectual life. But still the mediaeval 
spirit did not perish until it had permanently incor- 
porated into European life many noble influences by 
which our thought is very sensibly distinguished from 
that of antiquity. Our , intellectual sympathies are 
broader and more catholic. Our materialism is modi- 
fied by a strong undertone of idealism and of spirit- 
ualistic aspirations. Even our scepticism is more 
reverent than that of antiquity. Above all, the love 
of nature remains, — that priceless gift bequeathed 
by mediaeval faith to all succeeding ages of thought. 
In a word, the intellectual, like the social, develop- 
ment of modern times is composite in character. The 



THE PROTESTANT AGE. 171 

foreground is Greek, but in the background lurks 
something of the intense spirituality, the nr) T stical 
fervor, the strong, steadfast convictions which char- 
acterized the genius of the East. 

Such, then, are the general features of intellectual 
life in the Protestant era. Descending to details, 
there are two subjects that demand our special atten- 
tion. The one of these is the revival of the historic 
sense. 

Mediaeval life was saturated with two essentially 
Oriental vices — the love of the marvellous and the 
lack of veracity — which combined to render history 
impossible. The chroniclers of that period do not 
err from ignorance and superstition alone : they evince 
a careless contempt for the truth and a puerile pleas- 
ure in the invention of falsehoods, which can only 
be understood when we comprehend the peculiar 
tendencies of medieval life. People in those days 
cared little for the truth, except when it was supposed 
to minister to some religious purpose : the critical re- 
searches of a modern historian would have seemed as 
astonishing to them as their naive lack of veracity 
seems to us. But, with the advent of Protestant 
civilization, all this was changed. Men began to love 
the truth for its own sake : ceasing to employ them- 
selves with the marvels of futurity, they turned their 
attention to the realities of the present and the past ; 
no longer content with the rolt of chroniclers and 



172 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

commentators, they began to criticise and to investi- 
gate for themselves. And thus, in strict accordance 
with our fundamental law, the historical spirit was 
suddenly aroused from that deep stupor into which 
it had been plunged during the reign of Oriental faith 
in the West. 

The second subject which demands our attention 
is one of still greater importance : it furnishes, in 
fact, the final test of our work. If our theory be the 
true one, it must explain the rise of the scientific 
movement, — that crowning glory of Christian civiliza- 
tion. What, we have to ask, is the origin of modern 
science? What is the cause of our success in the 
study of nature, contrasting so strangely with the 
failure of the ancients? What is the character of 
that scientific induction by the use of which such a 
wonderful increase of knowledge has been gained? 
These questions, despite their supreme importance, 
have never yet been answered except in the vaguest 
and most superficial way. To them the following 
chapter is to be devoted. 



THE PROTESTANT AGE. 173 



CHAPTER VII. 

the Protestant age. — ( Continued.*) 

AS we begin our study of the scientific move- 
ment, the first fact that arrests our attention 
is the almost utter failure of the Greek in physical 
research. At first view it seems one of the most 
unaccountable phenomena of history. Take the case 
of Aristotle, for instance, and observe how futile are 
the ordinary methods of explaining this failure. Did 
it originate from the lack of interest in such pur- 
suits ? On the contrary, Aristotle, a pure type of the 
inquisitive genius of Greece, has left behind him 
monuments of patient and laborious research into 
the secrets of nature which no modern has ever sur- 
passed. Let it be further remembered that the first 
Greek thinkers were almost exclusively employed in 
the study of external phenomena : -it was only after 
two centuries of failure in physical research that they 
began to turn their attention to psychologic and ethi- 
cal philosophy. 1 .The ancients had, it is true, nothing 

1 Aristot., De Part. Anim., i. ; Opp., vi. 10. 



174 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

of the modern poetic sentiment for nature ; but they 
had a boundless thirst for knowledge and a sensation- 
al istic tendency, which rendered them deeply inter- 
ested in the problems of physical life. Or was the 
cause a contemptuous disregard of experience and 
observation ? On the contrary, Aristotle, following 
the natural bent of the Hellenic genius, yields to 
none in his emphatic recognition of experience as the 
fountain-source of knowledge. 2 Or was it, last of 
all, a lack of the necessary appliances for research ? 
Copernicus, an humble priest, unaided by any instru- 
ment, except one rudely constructed of three pieces 
of wood, 3 unravelled the secret of the heavens. The 
tutor of Alexander, on the contrary, could literally 
command the resources of a world-wide empire to aid 
him in his studies ; and yet he accomplished abso- 
lutely nothing for science. His physical researches 
are valuable to us only as an index of that singular 
inaptitude for scientific investigation which character- 
ized the Greek intellect at the proudest period of its 
development. 

The cause generally assigned for the failure of 
Aristotle and the ancients is the very opposite of the 
real one. The Greek failed in science, not through 
a lack but from an excess of that experiential ten- 
dency which is commonly supposed to constitute the 

2 Aristot, Analyt. Post., ii. 2. 4; Metapk., i. 1. 
8 Czynski, Kopernik, 38 



THE PROTESTANT AGE. 175 

essence of the scientific spirit. Sensationalism lay at 
the root of the Hellenic genius: it was the primary 
impulse by which classical life was controlled. Now 
the true scientific spirit, as we shall show hereafter, 
is founded upon an idealistic substratum of thought. 
The pure sensationalist can never pass beyond empir- 
icism except by violating the fundamental postulates of 
his philosophy. Experience teaches us nothing except 
the more or less orderly succession of phenomena : by 
its aid alone we could never pass beyond the conclu- 
sion that, generally, or so far as has been observed, 
certain events are followed by certain others. Sen- 
sationalism, therefore, is logically limited to the vi- 
cious induction per enumerationem simplicem : it is 
baffled in every attempt to attain that demonstrative 
certainty which science demands. The Greek, there- 
fore, in his study of nature was confined to the em- 
pirical method of the vulgar. He observed that a 
certain event was always, so far as his observation 
had extended, followed by a certain other one ; he 
consequently concluded that the first was the cause 
of the last. In other words, his induction consisted 
in a mere enumeration of particulars. 

Even in theory the Greek seems to have been un- 
able to recognize any other than this imperfect and 
vicious method of investigation. Aristotle, the first 
and greatest of ancient logicians, never speaks of in- 
duction except as a mere enumeration of particulars. 4 

4 Aristot., Analyt. Post., i. 32. 5 ; Analyt., Prior., ii. 25. 



176 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Many, indeed, have denied this : by subtle interpre- 
tations of his language they have endeavored to ex- 
culpate him from this gross empiricism. 5 But Aristotle 
himself is innocent of all these subtleties : he speaks 
plainly and constantly of induction in the way we 
have described. 6 Such conceptions, it is true, seem 
so crude to our modern thought that we can hardly 
believe them to have been held by the most acute 
logician and subtlest thinker of antiquity. But, let 
it be remembered that the ancient philosopher beheld 
the external world in a very different light from that 
which we have gained by three centuries of scientific 
training. To him but a very small part of material 
phenomena was governed by invariable law. In the 
heavens all was orderly and immutable ; but the greater 
portion of earthly phenomena was merely fortuitous, 
irregular, and uncertain. In the view of Aristotle, 
the natural was pre-eminently that which happened 
generally or for the most part. 7 If the critics of his 
logic had remembered this, the}*- might have spared 
all their subtleties. The inductive theory of Aris- 

5 Hamilton (Lectures on Logic, 230) insists, for instance, that Aris- 
totle was treating exclusively of logical, and not of scientific induc- 
tion. But Aristotle makes no such distinction ; and in reality there 
is none. All induction is material : all syllogistic reasoning is deduc- 
tive. 

6 In the Analyt. Post., i. 1, 3; Opp., ix. 146, he even speaks of rhe- 
torical examples or analogies as tending in the same relation to induc- 
tion that the enthymeme does to the syllogism. 

? Aristot., De Gen. Anim., iv. 8; Opp., vi. 332. 



THE PROTESTANT AGE. 177 

totle, as he plainly propounds it, is satisfactory and 
philosophical enough from his stand-point. The 
enumeration of all the particulars within the scope 
of observation gave at least a certainty equal to that 
which prevailed in the succession of the phenomena 
themselves. With this the most consummate logician 
of antiquity was naturally well content. 8 He neither 
sought nor expected to find a greater certainty in 
science than in nature. 

Our explanation of the failure of Greek science, as 
springing from an excess of the experiential tendency, 
is remarkably confirmed by the history of the scanty 
progress which was really made in the study of nat- 
ure. The root of idealism is the search for unity. 
Its cardinal doctrine teaches that there is one univer- 
sal principle from which all things emanate, through 
decreasing phases of generality which men call laws. 
It is not content, therefore, to frame empirical rules 
by simply grouping together phenomena which have 
certain resemblances, or a general uniformity of se- 
quence. It demands a true explanation. It seeks 
the law, the principle from which the phenomena 
have been evolved, by processes of ideal exactitude in 
nature, and from which they can therefore be mathe- 
matically deduced by the intellect. In other words, 
it furnishes the only foundation upon which genuine 

8 So the Arabians understood it. (Aseh-Schahrstani, Religions- 
partheien, ii. 226.) 

8* L 



178 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

induction can rest. Now, as we have seen, idealism 
was an exotic in Greece : it represents the counter- 
impulse to that which ruled Hellenic development in 
every department of thought and life. A surprising 
confirmation of our theory is, therefore, afforded by 
the fact never before noticed, we believe, that every 
real advance in physical research made by classical 
antiquity must be credited to the schools of idealism. 
We begin with those studies which form at once 
the basis and the preparation for all scientific pursuits. 
For mathematical investigation, the Hellenic genius 
exhibited a marked inaptitude and a strange indiffer- 
ence. The representative mind of Socrates discoun- 
tenanced any greater attention to mathematical 
studies than might be necessary for the keeping of 
accounts, or the mensuration of fields; 9 and the 
profound intellect of Aristotle seems to have regarded 
them with an only half-concealed contempt and sus- 
picion. 10 Studies thus regarded could naturally make 
but little progress. Even the science of arithmetic 
was known only in its rudest and most cumbrous 
form. Greek intellect, struggling for a th< usand 
years after it had created the greatest masterpiece of 
the world's literature, was unable to invent a simple 
system of arithmetical notation like that long prac- 
tised in India, and thence transmitted into Europe. 

9 Xenophon, Memorabilia, iv. 7. 2. 

10 Arist., Metaph., i. 9 ; ii. 2. 



THE PllOTESTANT AGE. 179 

And whatever feeble advance was made in such pur- 
suits, had its origin among the Pythagorean idealists, 
who stood in a position of antagonism, as we have 
seen, to almost every tendency ruling Hellenic life. 
They invented the Greek arithmetic. 11 They stand 
forth as the special cultivators of mathematical 
science among a people by whom such studies were 
regarded with disdain, or, at least, indifference. 12 

In geometry, also, every thing must be credited to 
the idealists. The first great contribution made to 
this study was what Comte enthusiastically calls 13 
" the immortal discovery of Pythagoras," concerning 
the properties of the right-angled triangle. An ad- 
ditional and still more important impulse -was gained 
through the labors of Plato, especially by his invention 
of geometrical analysis. 14 In fact, without the aid of 
these two great masters of idealism, the science of 
geometry would have had no existence in classical 
Greece. 

The history of the ancient astronomy is of similar 
import. Pure Hellenism, even when most cultured 
and inquiring, was forced by its empirical tendencies 
to accept the dictum of universal experience that the 
earth is immovably fixed in the centre of the universe. 
But the Pythagoreans, having little faith in mere 

11 Montucla, Histoire des Mathe'niatiques, i. 122. 

12 Arist., Metaph., i. 5 ; Opp., ii. 14. 

13 Corate, Positive Philosophy, ii. 244. 

14 Montucla, Hist, des Mathe'inatiques, i. 166. 



180 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

appearances, seeing in phenomena only the illusory 
shadows of the true realities, were enabled to rise 
above the vulgar view: they sought to correct the re- 
sults of observation by the application of idealistic 
principles, and thus succeeded in framing a theory of 
the universe not very far removed from the true one. 15 
Copernicus, as is well known, gathered the germs of 
his doctrine from the Pythagorean writings ; and, in 
the famous decree launched by the Catholic hierarchy 
against the Copernican theory, the new system is 
expressly designated as "falsa ill adoctrina Pythago- 
rica" 

The feeble advances made in other departments of 
physical research, also owe their origin to the labors 
of idealism. With Pythagoras began the systematic 
study of botany ; 16 to his followers the establishment 
of the first scientific school of medicine is due, 17 
although something had already been accomplished in 
both these pursuits by the more primitive Orphic 
idealism. 18 In the study of acoustics, furthermore, 
the Pythagoreans made the only genuine advance 
gained in any department of physics before the Alex- 
andrian age. 19 But the chief services of idealism did 
not consist in these disconnected and fragmentary dis- 

15 Martin, Etudes sur le Timee, ii. 121, etc. 

16 Pliny, Nat. Hist., xxv. 5. 

W Hippocrates, (Euvres, trad, par Littre, Pref . 

18 Lobeck, Aglaophamus sive de Theol. Myst. Graec. i. 212. 

19 Matter, Hist, de I'Ecde d'Alexandrie, ii. 13. 



THE PliOTKSTAXT AGE. 181 

coveries. While empiricism, like that of Aristotle 
and Theophrastus, was engrossed with those encyclo- 
pedic labors which served only to give to ignorance 
the appearance of wisdom, which merely threw to- 
gether an immense mass of truth and falsehood with- 
out any pretensions to scientific system or precision, 20 
the idealists were developing those fundamental 
principles upon which the subsequent progress of 
science depended. " The Platonic conviction con- 
cerning the mathematical laws of nature," as Dr. 
Whewell has truly said, 21 " has continued through all 
ages to be the animating and supporting principle of 
scientific investigation." In the same way Bacon, 
although sharing the natural prejudice of his nation 
and age against Pythagoras, is forced to admit that 
" the Pythagorean doctrine of numbers goes deep 
into the elementary principles of nature." 22 And 
what Bacon, standing at the threshold of modern 
science, saw but dimly may now be clearly recognized 
by all. When we consider the numerical laws which 
are found to govern the most intricate combinations of 
chemistry, when we behold the great cosmic phenom- 
ena gradually being resolved by one discovery after 
another into mathematical equations of force, we may 
well exclaim that the final results of modern science 

20 Spix, Gesch. d. all. Systeme in der Zoologie, 98. 

21 Whewell, History Inductive Sciences, ii. 108. 

22 Bacon, Works, i. 467. 



182 THE SECKET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

were foreshadowed more than two thousand years 
ago in the dreams of classical idealism. 

A still more emphatic confirmation of our theory- 
remains. The Alexandrian age, as we have seen, was 
the period of classical decadence. And this epoch, 
marked by the decline of the ancient Hellenic spirit, 
and the steady advance of idealistic influences from 
the East, is universally recognized as the scientific age 
of antiquity! At Alexandria men of science first 
began to appear as an independent class, separate 
from the philosophers. There scientific labor com- 
mences to assume something of its modern form. 
Geometry had been zealously cultivated by the older 
idealists ; but it was reserved for Euclid, a Platonist 23 
of the Alexandrian age, to erect it into a methodical 
science which Apollonius perfected in all its parts. 24 
Archimedes — most intimately connected with the 
school of Alexandria, 25 although the citizen of another 
state — became the founder of mechanics. To this 
great discoverer, deeply imbued with the principles of 
Platonic idealism, 26 is to be ascribed the signal honor 
of having first applied a true scientific method to 
those mechanical problems concerning which the 
empirical genius of Aristotle and of the Greeks in 
general had prattled so absurdly. In astronomy the 

23 Proclus, Comm. in Euclid., ii. 4. 

24 Matter, Hist, de I'Ecole d'Alexandrie, ii. 127. 

25 Ibid., ii. 120. ™ Plutarch, Marcel., 14, 15. 



THE PROTESTANT AGE. 183 

school of Alexandria attained almost equal pre-emi- 
nence. "With its members began all the Greek obser- 
vations which are of any value. 27 Among the earlier 
cultivators of astronomy of any note — Philolaus, 
Ecphantus, Hicetas, Archytas, Heraclides of Pontus, 
or Eudorus — there is no name which does not belong 
to the roll of Pythagorean or Platonic philosophers ; 
and the science finally reached the highest stage of 
perfection ever attained in ancient times through the 
labors of Aristarchus, Hipparchus, and others, 28 who 
dwelt in the atmosphere of those idealistic influences 
which focalized at Alexandria. Amid the same in- 
fluences the germs of geographical science were 
planted by Eratosthenes, of hydrostatics by Archi- 
medes, and of optics by Ptolemy. In the science of 
organic life, however, the labors of the Grseco- 
Egyptian school were not equally fortunate : with all 
the aid that could be afforded by the most magnifi- 
cent appliances for research, only the most insignifi- 
cant results were attained. The cause of this failure 
will appear more plainly hereafter. Suffice it for the 
present, that in every other department of science a 
real and permanent advance was made at Alexandria 
alone of all the centres of classical civilization. 

Let it be remembered, however, that this scientific 
epoch was of extremely short duration : the real move- 

27 Whewell, Hist. Ind. Sciences, ii. 153. 

28 Montucla, Hist, des Maih€matiques, i. 203. 



184 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

ment in advance was comprised within a space of time 
barely one hundred and fifty years in extent ; for very 
soon the idealistic impulse lapsed into those wild 
extremes which seem inseparable from its develop- 
ment. Theosophic and theurgic tendencies began to 
manifest themselves, which ended in the vagaries of 
the later Neo-Platonism. In a word, the Alexandrian 
philosophy ran the entire round of Oriental develop- 
ment. Beginning in an anti-empirical tendency most 
friendly to the scientific movement, it soon plunged 
into that morass of mysticism where all progress is 
rendered impossible. Hence, at the beginning of the 
first century before Christ, the career of science at 
Alexandria was virtually at an end. During the six 
centuries which intervened before the final vanishing 
of Neo-Platonism, the schools were almost entirely 
confined to a servile commentation upon the labors of 
a by-gone age, to a laborious but unscientific classifi- 
cation of materials, and to an endless re-echoing of 
ancient opinions. The history of Alexandrian thought 
teaches that, while idealism is the true parent of 
science, still, when left to herself, she will in the end 
throttle her own offspring. 

Such, then, is our explanation of the Greek failure 
in scientific research, to which the school of Alexan- 
dria, in its earlier years, offers the solitary exception. 
The cause of that failure has been found to be the 
essentially empirical tendency which controlled the 



THE PROTESTANT AGE. 185 

development of classical life. The Aristotelian, and 
all others following the ordinary bent of the Hellenic 
genius, were incapacitated from taking the first steps 
in a true scientific movement. To them nature was 
but a more or less orderly procession of phenomena, 
like that of an army on the march ; and induction 
{jataytayri) is the act of a general who, by certain logi- 
cal aids, arranges the disorderly troops into files, as if 
for review. Such a process as that is nothing, and 
can be nothing, but that induction by simple enumera- 
tion which in all ages has been the great stumbling- 
block in the way of scientific progress. Vary the 
procedure as you will, — add subtle methods of differ- 
ence, of residues, of variations, 29 — and still the process 
remains essentially the same. Still, it lacks the ideal- 
istic principle upon which every true induction must 
rest. 

The foundation of the true inductive process lies in 
the idealistic doctrine of unity. That doctrine teaches 
that causation is something more than a mere bond of 
succession which can be established when the effect 
has been observed to follow the cause in a great num- 
ber of cases. On the other hand, causation is a rigid 
process of evolution, or of emanation, if you will, by 
which the many phenomena have been strictly evolved 
from one law or universal force. Hence the final test 
of every supposed physical law lies in the proof that 

29 As J. S. Mill {Logic, iii., chap. 8) has done. 



186 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

from it the observed phenomena may be as rigidly 
deduced by the intellect as they have been evolved in 
nature. Of this test, constituting the first great canon 
of the inductive process, Aristotle, in all his subtle 
disquisitions concerning causes, furnishes no hint. Of 
it the Greeks as a race had no conception. Acute 
reasoners as they were, they were never weary of 
deduction: having established some universal by a 
mere enumeration of particulars, they went on boldly 
deducing all manner of consequences from it with 
wonderful ingenuity. But they never dreamed that 
the deduction was to be applied before the establishment 
of the universal, as the final test of its validity ; that 
until the deduced consequences had been shown to 
precisely correspond with the observed phenomena, 
they had only an empirical rule, worthless for scien- 
tific purposes. Such a conviction, the sensational 
philosophy can neither originate nor enforce. 

Lord Bacon has said that Plato, alone of all the 
ancients, made use of the genuine inductive method. 30 
Applied to Plato, as the representative of an excep- 
tional class, and as distinguished from the great 
majority of Greek and Roman thinkers, the remark 
is a true one. And yet the shallow empiricism of the 
present age has asserted the exact reverse of this : it 
has enthroned Aristotle as the true type of the in- 
ductive spirit, and the founder of ancient science. 

30 Bacon, Nov. Org., i. 105. 



THE PROTESTANT AGE. 187 

Nothing could be farther from the truth ; unless, 
indeed, mere talking about induction constitute the 
essence of the scientific spirit. Amid all the encyclo- 
pedic studies of the great Stagyrite, extending over so 
many different departments of physical research, no 
man can lay his hand upon a single discovery, or one 
permanent contribution, made to the wealth of sci- 
ence. 31 In his own proper field, Aristotle stands 
unrivalled and unapproachable. But his physical 
studies remain a true type of Greek empiricism, and 
a lasting monument of its utter worthlessness when 
applied to the study of nature. 

We are now prepared to understand the various 
influences which have combined to create the scien- 
tific development of modern times. The Greeks, as 
we have seen, failed in science on account of certain 
limitations that were imposed upon them by the pre- 
vailing tendencies of classical thought. It was the 
mission of medievalism to remove these limitations, 
to firmly incorporate into the thought of Europe 
those fundamental convictions upon which the in- 
ductive process must ever rest. For many centuries 
the intellect of Christendom was being moulded by the 
scholastic philosophy into certain forms of thought : 
the moulds were long since cast away, but the im- 
pressions still remain. Deeply impressed upon all 

31 Lewes, Aristotle, 220, et al. 



188 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

truly scientific thought are certain idealistic convic- 
tions which can only be ascribed to the influence 
of mediaeval realism. What these conceptions are, 
and how they have regulated the method of physical 
research, will more clearly appear hereafter. Suffice 
it for the present, that modern Europe has inherited 
from the middle ages that idealistic substratum of 
thought upon which the inductive method is based. 

Farther than this, mediaeval thought could not go : 
it might la}^ the foundations, but could not build. By 
other essential characteristics of its nature, by its lack 
of the critical and inquiring spirit, by its servile defer- 
ence to authority, by its boundless credulity and love 
of the marvellous, by its veneration of theology as the 
sum and substance of all science, it was confined to 
endless commentation upon the labors of the past, and 
prevented from any untrammelled investigation in the 
field of nature. Mediaeval science was therefore, for 
the most part, only a servile reproduction of the ideas 
of Aristotle and the Arabians. No advance was made, 
because none was really attempted. The spirit of 
investigation was, as it were, under the ban of out- 
lawry; and the few inquiries instituted by the alche- 
mists and others were regarded with universal suspicion 
and dislike. Another age must come before the 
scientific principles which were imprisoned within 
the mediaeval philosophy could be freed from their 
bondage, and thus enabled to perform their proper 



THE TROTESTANT AGE. 189 

work iii the study of nature and the formation of 
science. 

At last the spirit of free inquiry was once more 
aroused, after fifteen hundred years of slumber. But 
it now began its labors under very different conditions 
from those which ruled in antiquity. It came forth 
deeply imbued with certain convictions which mediae- 
valism had bequeathed to Europe, and through the 
lack of which ancient genius had so signally failed in 
scientific investigation. Among these convictions is 
the idealistic faith in the harmony, symmetry, and 
unity of the universe, — a belief which is so finely 
expressed in the saying of Plotinus, that " Nature is 
the sleeping Logos." Out #f this has sprung that 
poetic love of nature, that profound enthusiasm for 
her beauties, which everywhere animates our modern 
thought, and which, is so strangely lacking in the 
poetry and art of, ancient Greece. Second among 
these convictions, and closely affiliated with the first, 
is the belief in natural kinds, — a belief of which 
sensationalism can give no rational account, 32 but 
which is directly derivative from the idealistic doc- 

3 - Mill (Logic, i. chap. 7, § 4), for instance, can find no distinction 
between a natural kind and an artificial group, except that in the first 
the differences are innumerable, while in the second they are not. 
Concerning which we say simply that it is not true, as a matter of 
fact. The number of differences depends upon the complexity of organ- 
ization. Tnere are more differences between two individuals of the 
one human species than between the members of two different grand 
divisions of the sub-kingdom of Radiata. 



190 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

trine, that before the phenomenal group of things 
there was an eternal idea or type of which each indi- 
vidual of the class is a sensible manifestation. But 
greatest of all the contributions of idealism to modern 
thought is the scientific conception of law, as opposed 
to an empirical rule founded merely upon the observa- 
tion of the succession of phenomena. In that con- 
ception lies the soul of the old realism, stripped of its 
verbiage and its logical subtleties. For what is the 
scientific law but the true universal hidden from 
human observation, but existent in the bosom of God ? 
What, for instance, is the law of gravitation but an 
eternal idea displaying its varied manifestations in 
every part of the universe, — an inscrutable unity by 
which the falling of a stone and the revolution of the 
earth in its orbit are made one in origin and in 
nature ? 

And to the influence of these idealistic conceptions 
of nature and law must be ascribed the modern suc- 
cess in scientific investigation. In no other respect 
can we claim pre-eminence over the ancients. In the 
spirit of criticism, in the restless desire of knowledge, 
in capacity of intellect, or in power of abstract thought, 
no one would dare to assert their inferiority. Only 
through this idealistic substratum underlying our 
modern thought are we differenced from them. With- 
out it, our research would have ended, as theirs did, 
in vague generalities and empirical rules ; with it, we 



TITE PROTESTANT AGE. 191 

have attained to the perfect method of scientific in- 
duction. 

The root of that inductive process lies in the search 
for a principle from which the phenomena may be 
legitimately deduced. The every-day philosophy of 
the vulgar establishes a law whenever it has observed 
a constant sequence of phenomena ; it explains a 
given event simply by referring it to an empirical 
rule, which is merely a general statement of that 
and similar facts. But scientific idealism insists 
that something else is needed before a law is estab- 
lished. It was of no avail, for instance, that the 
experience of ages had noted constant sequences be- 
tween the lunar phenomena and the changes of the 
tides : no induction was framed until it was proved 
that these sequences could be mathematically deduced 
from the principle of gravitation. The vulgar accept 
a great number of empirical rules concerning the. 
influence of the moon upon terrestrial events : this 
one alone, in the way mentioned, has been erected 
into a scientific law. And whenever a true induction 
is made it is founded upon this principle, modified at 
times as we shall see hereafter, but always essentially 
the same. Everywhere in true research the principle 
reigns, that the law or universal is a real unity from 
which the phenomena have been evolved with mathe- 
matical exactitude in nature, and can therefore be 
rigidly deduced by the intellect. 



192 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

But this, the idealistic element, is but one half of 
the inductive process. For if induction consisted 
only in the discovery of some principle from which 
the phenomena could be deduced, then the acutest 
investigator of nature would be the one who could 
invent the most ingenious hypotheses ; and the realm 
of science would become a wilder dreamland than 
that of poetry. Against this danger science guards 
by clinging to that element of truth which underlies 
the sensational philosophy. It insists that principles 
are not to be invented by the intellect, but to be 
derived from the data of sensation. It proclaims- the 
great truth which Newton had in view, when he 
somewhat obscurely announced that in the investiga- 
tion of nature we are to assume, not hypotheses, but 
" true causes" 33 In other words, no cause is to be 
assumed in order to account for phenomena, unless, 
i in some case at least, its action may be so disengaged 
from all other causation that we can directly behold 
its simple, immediate, and undoubted operation. This 
rule constitutes the second great canon of the induc- 
tive process to which every induction must conform 
or else be relegated to the realm of hypothesis. The 
theory of gravitation, for instance, although account- 

33 Whewell {Philosophy, Inductive Sciences, ii. 441) has confessed his 
inability to understand the Newtonian distinction between hypotheses 
and verae causae. He has failed, therefore, to grasp one-half of the 
inductive process and hence the one-sidedness and superficiality of his 
theory. 



THE PROTESTANT AGE. 193 

ing for all astronomical phenomena, would fall short 
of scientific certainty, unless in the falling of a body 
through a vacuum to the earth we could directly 
behold the operation of that principle disengaged 
from all other influences. In other words, gravitation 
is a sort of algebraic symbol for the law governing 
the descent of the stone. In chemistry, again, the 
theory of phlogiston was only a figment of the fancy ; 
but oxygenation is a " true cause," whose operation 
disengaged from all other influences may be directly 
beheld by chemical experiment. In optics, also, the 
theory of undulations still trembles in the balance of 
certainty because it does not completely fulfil the 
second requisition of the inductive process. 

Such, then, is the method of true induction. Its 
law is compounded of two maxims, — the one de- 
manding that a principle be found from which the 
observed sequences of phenomena may be rigidly 
deduced, — the other, that no principle shall be 
assumed except true causes, the simple and indepen- 
dent operation of which can be exhibited by obser- 
vation or experiment. Induction, therefore, is a 
twofold process, each of whose parts is a check upon 
the other. By the due combination of both, modern 
research is guarded from the danger of crude empiri- 
cism on the one hand, and from that of exaggerated 
idealism on the other. 

Furthermore, it is seen that this twofold process 

9 M 



194 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

has had a twofold origin. The one element is the 
fruit of those idealistic convictions which departing 
medievalism bequeathed to Europe ; the other is 
rooted in that experiential or Hellenic tendency which 
for the last three centuries has been gradually taking 
possession of the thought of Christendom. Science, 
then, is not the child of any one system of thought. 
The experiential philosophy has been in the habit of 
claiming its exclusive parentage ; but before the light 
of our analysis such a claim will not stand for a 
single moment. Modern empiricism would have 
remained as utterly sterile as did that of ancient 
Greece, if it had not been for her alliance with the 
spirit of idealism. Although in her ignorance she 
may affect to despise her consort, yet the stubborn 
fact remains. Science is the legitimate offspring of 
the union between these two unharmonious spirits, 
accomplished in the development of Christian civili- 
zation for the first time in the history of the human 
race. 

We believe this to be the true genesis of modern 
science ; and it only remains for us to verify our law 
by a survey of the progress which has already been 
made in the different branches of physical research. 

We note, first of all, that astronomy owes its origin 
to the labors of idealists." The sole inspiration of 
Copernicus was his firm faith in the unity and liar- 



THE PROTESTANT AGE. 195 

mony of the universe. 34 Casting aside the empirical 
doctrines of antiquity, 35 he struggled through a long 
lifetime of toil, to reduce the seeming chaos of the 
heavenly motions to a system of perfect order and 
mathematical proportion. After Copernicus came 
Kepler, boldest and most profound of all modern 
mystics. Empiricists, forced to admit the splendor of 
his discoveries, have had no resort except to claim 
that he accomplished so much in spite of his philos- 
ophy. 36 But nothing could be farther from the truth. 
It was the idealism of Kepler that separated him from 
the great body of his co-laborers, who were able to 
observe, but not to discover. It was his faith in the 
celestial harmonies that animated him through seven- 
teen years of search : that led him on, step by step, 
until he had grasped those great laws of the universe 
with which his name is inseparably linked. 37 Last of 
all in this line of discoverers came Newton, at one 
period of his life an alchemist, and always a zealous 
student of Jacob Boehme and German mysticism. 38 
In a word, the great astronomical triumvirate were 
all disciples of one faith. The idealism of Copernicus, 

34 Czynski, Copernik et ses Ouvrages, 6, etc. 

85 He attacks the Aristotelian physics as the chief obstacle to the 
reception of his theory. (De Rev. Orb. Coelestium, i. 7, 8.) 

3« Bethune, Galileo, 27. 

8 7 Frisch, Kepleri Opera, viii. 1017; Forster, Kepler u. die Ear- 
monie der Spharen, 4. 

38 Brewster, Life of Newton, 270. 



196 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Kepler, and Newton, has been the creator of modern 
astronomy. 

Mechanics became a true science only after the law 
of inertia had been discovered. This law, proclaiming 
the persistence of motion, seems now almost axiom- 
atic. We wonder that it should have so long remained 
unknown: we are especially surprised that its first 
discoverers should have deemed it necessary to sup- 
port so simple a principle by labored arguments drawn 
from idealistic philosophy. 39 But our wonder is entirely 
misplaced. The principle is not a self-evident one, 
and its discovery was by no means easy. All the 
facts seemed to point to a contrary conclusion. They 
had been daily observed during twenty centuries of 
civilization; they might have been observed for 
twenty centuries more without any insight into the 
truth being gained. But at last Descartes and his 
co-laborers grasped this idea of the persistence of 
motion, not as a rule derived from experience, but 
as a principle necessarily evolved from the idealistic 
faith. The principle was applied to the phenomena, 
and suddenly they were beheld in a new light. Diffi- 
culties which had baffled all former research were 
readily explained : every thing became easy when 
men remembered that the order of nature was one of 
perfect uniformity and simplicity. 

It was the same with electrical science. Its founda- 

39 Libes, Hist. Philos. de la Physique, ii. 5. 



THE PROTESTANT AGE. 197 

tions were laid by the labors of Gilbert, an idealist 40 
who saw in electricity, not — as the ancients did — a 
strange peculiarity of certain substances, 41 but the 
manifestation of a mysterious power which pervades 
all nature, and upon which the movements of the 
universe depend. 42 Looking at things from the same 
point of view, Black was enabled to establish the law 
of the indestructibility of heat, and thus to lay the 
foundations of thermological science. 43 In fact, every 
part of natural philosophy has gradually come to have 
one aim, — to reduce all things to unity; to prove 
that all physical phenomena are the emanations of a 
universal force, unknown, indefinable, and yet the sole 
reality. 

The first real advance towards the formation of 
chemical science was made by the alchemists, an 
order of men unknown to ancient Greece or Rome, 44 
but springing up wherever mysticism flourishes. 45 
The theory of the three principles which they substi- 
tuted for the old doctrine of the four elements sheds 
the first ray of light upon the chemical constitution 



40 Bacon, Interpretation of Nature, Works, i. 427. 

41 Gilbert, De Magnete, i. 3, in Humboldt, Cosmos, ii. 342. 
4a Ibid., v. 12, in Libes's Hist, de la Physique, ii. 

43 Buckle, Hist. Civilization, ii. 391, seq. ; Comte, Pos. Philos., 
i. 241. 

44 Kopp, Beitrage zur Gesch. d. Chemie, 30. 

45 Even that soberest of all mediaeval idealists, Aquinas, was an 
alchemist. (Hoefer, Hist, de la Chimie, 369.) 



198 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

of bodies. 46 Through this analysis, rude as it was, 
they gradually undermined the empiric belief in the 
elementary simplicity of earth, air, fire, and water ; 
and thus, by showing that the so-called elements were 
really compound, they led the way to a patient search 
after the real chemical constituents. This alcbemistic 
movement culminated with Paracelsus. To his teach- 
ings the first school of true chemistry traces its 
origin. 47 

The next advance was made by the mystic 48 Van 
Helmont, who discovered that certain gases were 
essentially distinct from the atmosphere with which 
they had been previously confounded. 49 This dis- 
covery led to the establishment of the phlogistic 
theory. False as this famous theory has since been 
proved to be, it yet performed a work of immense 
importance for the interests of chemistry. 50 It led 
men to see that there was a real unity between the 
processes of combustion, acidification, and respira- 
tion, — phenomena stretching over the entire range 
of material existence, and- having so little outward 
resemblance that they must always have seemed 
utterly diverse to merely empirical research. Still 
the induction, once hailed as equal to that made by 

48 Kopp, Geschiclite der Chemie, ii. 271. 

47 Sprengel, Gesch. der Arzneikunde, iii. 547. 
« Ibid., iv. 301. 

49 Harms, Philos. Einleitung in die Physik, 223. 

50 Kopp, Gesch der Chemie, i. 267. 



THE PEOTESTANT AGE. 19^ 

Newton, 51 was essentially imperfect. It failed to 
comply with the second requisition of the twofold 
inductive process: it fulfilled the idealistic maxim by 
presenting a principle from which many of the most 
important chemical phenomena could be deduced; 
but it did not show this principle as something actu- 
ally existent in nature. The phlogistic theory, there- 
fore, was not a complete induction : it was merely an 
hypothesis useful for certain provisional purposes. 

At last oxjrgen was discovered. The process of 
oxygenation was so disengaged from all other chemi- 
cal operations by the medium of experiment, that it 
could be recognized as a simple and ultimate prin- 
ciple. It was now only necessary to substitute this 
" true cause " in the place of the hypothetical phlo- 
giston, and the scientific theory of combustion was 
finally perfected. The twofold requisition of the 
inductive process was complied with : a true cause 
had been found from which the observed phenomena 
could be rigidly deduced. Chemical science, resting 
upon this wide and perfect induction, was at last 
established upon firm foundations. 

We pause here to note one fact very important to 
all those who would understand the history of science. 
The scientists of the seventeenth century insist with 
strong emphasis upon the paramount value of obser- 
vation and experiment in the study of nature. But 

51 Kant, Kritik der reinen Vemunft, xiii. (Leipzig, 1818.) 



200 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

it must be remembered that their words are not to be 
interpreted in the sense of the empirical philosophy. 
Harvey, for instance, in his statement of the true 
scientific method, is zealous in the praise of experi- 
ence. But he is no empiricist. In his endeavor to 
clear away the contradictions in Aristotle's doctrine 
of universals, in his recognition of the affinity between 
the scientific and the Platonic idea, he reveals a strong 
under-current of idealism, which he tries to harmonize 
with his experimental principles. 52 Indeed, the early 
scientists, in their discourse upon the true scientific 
method, have little reference to the questions raised 
by modern empiricism. They extol close and critical 
observation of nature, not in contrast with idealism, 
but in opposition to that servile deference to the 
opinions of Aristotle and the other ancient masters 
which still characterized the greater part of mankind. 
It is this thought which is dwelt upon by Leonardo de 
Vinci, the first herald of the true scientific spirit. 53 
Neither he nor his co-laborers had the 'east suspicion 
that the idealistic faith was inconsistent with the 
experimental method. Having noted th.lt , we return 
to our survey of the sciences. 

In the classificatory sciences, also, all true progress 
has been gained under the lead of idealism. Mere 
empiricism has always been content to group objects 

62 Hafvey, De Gen. Anim. Praef. De modo acq. cognitionis. 
53 Venturi, Les Ouvrages de Leonardo de Vinci, 33. 



THE PROTESTANT AGE. 201 

in one class, simply because they happen to have cer- 
tain resemblances with each other; and the result has 
been an artificial and arbitrary arrangement imper- 
fectly conforming with the order of nature. But 
idealism teaches that of each true kind there is an 
archetypal idea manifesting itself in every member of 
the class. In classification it seeks for this typical 
idea around which all the essential characteristics of 
the class arrange themselves in accordance with some 
unknown law. Thus the arrangement ceases to be 
arbitrary and unnatural. Phenomena which are 
evolved from one idea in nature come to be com- 
prehended in one class by science. 

This process of scientific classification has reached 
its greatest perfection in mineralogical studies. Here 
certain geometrical forms are found to be the simple 
ideas around which all essential characteristics of the 
class arrange themselves, in accordance with some 
mysterious law of nature. In a word, crystallography 
furnishes the ideal towards which all classificatory 
sciences are tending. 

In zoology, likewise, no inconsiderable advance has 
been made. Even the mediaeval writers, in spite of 
their servile adherence to the opinions of the past, 
evince a constant striving after a more idealistic 
arrangement than that which had been established 
by Aristotle from the empirical study of peculiarities 
9* 



202 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

and resemblances. 54 In the present century we seem 
to be moving very rapidly towards a solution of this 
problem. Animal structures, which at first view seem 
to have little in common, have been found to be char- 
acterized by a strict unity of design ; and, especially, 
have the happiest results sprung from the conception 
of a vertebral archetype, variously manifesting itself 
in the- different classes of vertebrates. And so in 
botany. Ever since the days of Dioscorides, 55 bota- 
nists have been groping after a scientific arrangement 
of plants which shall perfectly correspond with the 
system of nature. Their efforts have not yet been 
crowned with success, botanical classes being still 
established, for the most part, by the mere grouping 
of arbitrarily selected resemblances. Progress has 
been made, however, especially through Goethe's 
famous discovery of the law of transformation in 
plants. Thereby a far clearer conception has been 
gained of the unity and simplicity which characterize 
the seemingly chaotic arrangement of nature. At 
the present time all truly scientific research, in botany 
as elsewhere, seeks for a system of classification which 
shall assign one simple archetypal idea to every natu- 

54 Spix, Geschichte Syst. Zoologie, 57. 

55 Dioscorides, the first botanist as distinguished from mere ency- 
clopedists, like Theophrastus, was not a Greek, but an Asiatic, imper- 
fectly acquainted with the Greek language. (Sprengel, Gesch. der 
Botanik, i. 136. 



THE PHOTESTANT AGE. 203 

ral kind. 56 Indeed it would almost seem that the 
dreams of Plato concerning the relations of the phe- 
nomenal to the ideal, were becoming the ultimate 
problems of modern science, towards the solution of 
which we are hastening with no feeble nor uncertain 
strides. 

Geological research, being mostly historical and 
descriptive in its aims, would seem to require only 
habits of close and accurate observation. Here, at 
least, the scientific method of empiricism would seem 
sufficient for all demands. And yet, in reality, noth- 
ing more amply verifies our law that the true induc- 
tive spirit is based upon an idealistic substratum of 
thought than the history of geognostic doctrines. 

At the outset of its career geology found itself 
confronted by an obstacle, for the removal of which 
the labors of a century were barely sufficient. That 
obstacle was the doctrine of the casual and the spon- 
taneous. The belief in universal causation cannot 
logically spring from a mere observation of particu- 
lars ; and, as a matter of fact, it has never been recog- 
nized by the empirical philosophy, except in those 
modern schools which during the last two centuries 
have been compelled to yield so much to the idealism 
of science. To Aristotle, and to Greek sensationalism 

66 Lindley (Vegetable Kingdom, xxix.) gives this as the maxim of 
botanic research : " Singula sphaera (sectio) ideam quandam exponit, 
indeque ejus character notione simplici optime exprimitur." 



204 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

in general, the great mass of phenomena seemed of 
merely fortuitous origin. The invariable and the 
necessary were, for the most part, confined to the 
sphere of the heavens ; on earth they were exhibited 
only at rare intervals, and the wide gaps were filled 
up with a crowd of phenomena which had no law 
but accident and no cause but the caprices of nature. 57 
Even Plato yields in this, as in many other things, 
somewhat to the vulgar and empirical view; 58 but 
his idealism saves him from the final consequences 
of such a belief. The imperfection of the parts, he 
substantially says, is merged in the perfection of the 
whole. The universe, in its entirety, is possessed of 
absolute beauty and order : it is the visible image of 
the invisible God. 59 Near the close of the middle 
ages we find Nicolaus von Cusa, an idealist of the 

57 According to Aristotle {Physic Ausc, viii. 9) the heavenly 
motions are more perfect than the earthly. Ascending motion is 
more perfect than the descending (De Coelo, ii. 5. 2.) ; consequently 
the warm element is more noble than the cold. Hence upon the 
amount of heat in animals, 'depends the perfection of their gen- 
eration. (De Gen. Anim., ii. 2.) And so a continually descending 
scale of perfection was formed. Furthermore, in the heavens all is 
invariable and according to law (De Coelo, ii. 5. 1.) : nothing happens 
spontaneously or fortuitously. And universally, the most perfect 
and orderly things are the greatest distance from us. It is true that 
there is something natural and beautiful even in the lowest animals (De 
Part. Anim., i. 5) ; but it is mixed with much that is unregulated by 
law, unnatural and fortuitous. 

58 Plato (Timaeus, 48, A.) admits accidental causes. Also grades 
of perfection in phenomena. (Ibid., 90, D.) 

59 Ibid., 92, C. ; EIkuv tov votjtov dsov alodT/Toe. 



THE PROTESTANT AGE. 205 

Pythagorean school and the forerunner of Coperni- 
cus, boldly controverting the doctrine of Aristotle in 
all its parts. 60 There is no such antithesis, he says, 
between the heavens and the earth ; the sublunary 
phenomena are as perfect and invariable as the celes- 
tial. Thus, mediaeval idealism began the work of 
subverting the physical theories of Aristotle and of 
developing the doctrine of universal causation. The 
work, however,, was not fully perfected for cen- 
turies. 

The doctrine of the fortuitous, or of spontaneous 
generation, played, then, a most important part, in 
the Aristotelian as well as in the vulgar view of 
nature. 61 It was this conception, applied to paleon- 
tological phenomena, which threatened to throttle 
the infant science of geology. The common mind, 
looking with vague curiosity upon the fossils which 
were found imbedded in the various strata of the 
earth, was content to say that they had been sponta- 
neously produced. With that explanation, of course, 
all inquiry was at an end. Against this doctrine, so 
fatal to the interests of geological research, scientific 
idealism protested with all its power. Firmly con- 
vinced that nature was an ideal unity, and not merely 

• 60 Harms, Philos. Einleitung in die Physik, 218. 
61 Aristot., Physic Ausc, ii. 5. 1 ; De Gen. Anim., i. 1. Theophras- 
tus, also, makes constant use of this doctrine in his botanic studies. 
(Theoph., Hist. Plantarum, ii. 1. 1 ; De Causis Plant., iv. 4. 10 ; ii. 7. 1, 
et al. 



206 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

a fortuitous concourse of phenomena, it insisted that 
even the most trifling events were something more 
than lusus naturce, — that even these stony mould- 
ings upon the rocks, trivial as they seemed, were 
under as rigid a bond of causation as were the move- 
ments of the planetary system. From this conviction 
sprang the science of geology. Its first feeble ad- 
vance is to be credited to the idealism of art. Leon- 
ardo de Vinci, at an early day, fixed his attention 
upon geognostic questions, and argued forcibly against 
the common belief that the fossils were merely freaks 
of nature. 62 After him, for a century or two, a desul- 
tory discussion was carried on, with varying results. 
At last came Steno, who can rightfully claim the 
honor of having been the founder of geology. Ani- 
mated by the convictions described above, Steno 
made a faithful study of the strata of the earth's 
surface, and waged a triumphant war against the 
doctrine of spontaneity. 63 He may be said to have 



62 Venturi, Essai sur les Ouvrages de Leonardo de Vinci, 13. 

63 Steno (De Solido intra Solidum, 6) states the geologic problem 
thus : "dato corpore certa figura praedito et juxta leges naturae pro- 
ducto, in ipso corpore argumenta invenire locum et modum produc- 
tionis detegentia." The extent of the vulgar prejudice concerning 
spontaneity may be imagined when we find Steno forced to substan- 
tiate such propositions as this : " nullam esse montium vegeta- 
tionem." (Ibid., 34.) Steno's idealism is of the geometrical type. 
He even seeks to subject the vague anatomical principles of his age 
to the rigors of geometrical deduction. (See his Myologiae Specimen 
aut Musculi Descriptio Geometrica.) 



THE ritOTESTANT AGE. 207 

given the death-blow to the empirical convictions 

which had led learned men like Fallopio to believe 
that even the vases dug from the earth were acci- 
dental impressions or freaks of nature. 

The second era of geologic progress introduces 
the question of species. Pure empiricism naturally 
tends to ignore the distinctions of species, or, at least, 
to belittle their importance. We find even Bacon 
yielding to the opinion of the empirical multitude, 
that the minute subdivisions of organic life are merely 
the products of " the sport and wantonness of na- 
ture," unworthy of the attention of the wise. 64 It 
has been the work of idealism to slowly create a 
counter-conviction. 65 Thereby men have been gradu- 
ally led to see that a natural kind is something more 
than a mere aggregation of resembling objects, — that 
it represents a simple and definite idea, co-existent 
with the creative thought. The distinctions of spe- 
cies, therefore, are not changeful and evanescent : 
they are as fixed and immutable as the eternal ideas 
which they represent. Under the influence of this 
conception men entered upon a work which would 
have seemed utterly puerile and absurd to ancient 
empiricism : they began that minute and laborious 

64 Bacon, Works, iii. 427. 

65 Plato (Parraenides, 312 ) illustrates the slow growth of this 
conception. The youthful Socrates speaks slightingly concerning 
the distinctions of species. But the matured idealism of Parmenides 
leads him to an impressive recognition of their importance. 



208 THE SECRET OF CHRISTIANITY. 

comparison of fossils with existent species which has 
led to our present knowledge of the earth's history. 
And thus, a second time, the convictions of idealism 
have proved to be the mainsprings of geological dis- 
covery. 

Such, then, is the origin of science. It has sprung 
from the free critical life of modern times, but from that 
life modified by the influences of an older faith. With- 
out these influences Greek research ended in vulgar 
empiricism. With them, modern research has gained 
those triumphs which are indeed the crowning glories 
of Christian civilization. 



CONCLUSION. 209 



CHAPTER VIII. 



CONCLUSION. 



OUR study of civilization is now ended. Its 
object, as we believe, has been fully attained. 
For the first time, a scientific explanation has been 
given of the essential difference between Christianity 
and all other forms of religion. Paganism, as we 
have seen, consists in the unrestrained development 
of that moral tendency which happens to control the 
popular life. There is no check nor counter-balance. 
There is no possibility of reform, but only a continual 
evolution of the original impulse and a constant ex- 
aggeration of its defects. But the law of Christianity 
is that of antagonism. It opposes itself to the ruling 
tendency of the popular life : it seeks to reform, to 
regenerate. This simple law of antagonism has ex- 
plained every important element of Christian civiliza- 
tion, whether mediaeval or modern. It is the real 
secret of Christianity. 

Science carries with it, to a certain extent at least, 
the power of prevision. And even here, amid the 



210 THE SECRET OP CHRISTIANITY. 

complexity of social life, our knowledge of the law of 
Christianity enables us to catch a glimpse of the future 
of Christendom. It is quite evident that the free 
humanistic spirit is rapidly approaching the climax of 
its development. It is sweeping forward to its final 
excesses. It has pushed the great body of men into a 
condition of doubt, of utter indifference to spiritual 
things, of intense worldliness, like that which charac- 
terized the last days of classical civilization. Hence, 
in accordance with its fundamental law, Christianity 
must soon undergo another transformation. The 
sense of spiritual need will again be aroused to its 
fullest activity. A new age of faith will begin. 



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